Reviving My Blog

It has been almost three years since I left Malawi, and even longer since I posted a blog on this page.  In May of 2010 I flew straight to New York from South Africa to start working at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, and quickly got swept up in the life I'm currently living.  Obviously a lot has happened in my life in that period of time.  I am engaged to marry my life partner and the women I love.  We've become Brooklynites, and bought a home in Sunset Park.  Beekeeping has become much more than a side project for me.  I've learned a tremendous amount from some of the best beekeepers in the northeast United States, and am always learning more and more.  I mange an expanding apiary at Stone barns while consulting and teaching a wide variety of bee keepers and bee lovers on the side.

Keeping the bees at Stone barns has led to one opportunity after another, and now it is leading to a chance to travel back to Africa.  I was offered an opportunity to volunteer on a project through the USAid farmer to farmer program in October of last year, and now I will leave for Uganda in one weeks time.  The project is being implemented by CNFA a DC based non-profit international development organization.  The project was requested by a Ugandan community based organization called the Liberty Development Organization (LIDEFO).  According to my scope of work report LIDEFO has mobilized 700 farmers (200 women and 500 men) in the Kasese region to establish apiaries and they are currently producing 2.5 metric tones of honey per harvest twice a year.  This may sound like a lot, but if you consider that it 700 farmers are harvesting each time, than that would mean about 6-8 lb. of honey per beekeeper, which is certainly on the low end.

The beekeepers in Kasese bring their honey to a bulking center where it is filtered and packed into half liter containers to be sold locally LIDEFO expressed that the Kasese beekeepers have been having problems with honey that has too high of a water content or has been contaminated.  My role will be to work with and observe the beekeepers throughout the process of harvesting, transporting, filtering, packaging, and storing to help identify hazards that compromise the final product.  We will then organize some trainings based on our findings, and ultimately produce a best practices manual that will be translated and distributed to the beekeepers.  It's essentially the same process that goes into developing a HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) plan.  I'm also planning sessions on wax processing, other bee products, making increase splits, and general apiary management.  I will be in Kasese working with the beekeepers for a week, then will work on the manual in Kampala at the CNFA offices.

It would be pure hubris to think that I am going to go there as a foreigner and revolutionize the way they keep bees and produce honey.  I am not going there with those delusions at all, but I do think that it is always valuable to get an outside perspective in any operation, and I fully intend to devote my complete focus and energy to giving the Kasese beekeepers the most helpful assessment I can.  In Malawi the best thing I did was empower a much more experienced local beekeeper than me to share his knowledge with enthusiastic learners.  His name was Bwana Mgogoninga and he was a fantastic teacher.  We organized several workshops together with great success.  I may not have the time to identify and develop a working relationship with somebody in Kasese like I did with Mgogoninga, but I can still highlight local knowledge instead of posing to have all of the answers.

I have been researching existing beekeeping projects in Uganda and I came across a wonderful UK based organization called Bees for Development who has worked a lot in Uganda, they have printed manuals on Market access for beekeepers and a guide to honey packing in Uganda,  I bought everything they offer related to Uganda and have gleaned lots of good information from them.  Bees for Development also put me in touch with a national beekeeping organization that they helped start called The Uganda National Apiculture Association (TUNADO)....man it's great to be bombarded by acronyms again! I will meet with the director of TUNADO the monday after I arrive in Kampala to get input from him on this project, and find out what support they can offer to the Kasese beekeepers.  Apparently LIDEFO has not worked with TUNADO up till now, so I look forward to seeing if this might be a beneficial relationship to foster between the two organizations.

Okay, so why am I writing about a project in Uganda in a blog called Dan in Malawi?  Well I couldn't imagine traveling all the way back to Africa and not seeing my friends in Malawi so I've decided to make a quick sojourn back to the warm heart of Africa.  When I'm done in Uganda, I will fly to Malawi for one week.  I already mentioned that a lot has happened in my life since I last wrote a blog post, well much more has happened in Mwazisi to be sure.  As I was leaving a cell tower was being built with in range of the trading center.  Now I hear the village has been connected to the electric grid!  The road has been paved to the trading center.  And there has been two more Peace Corps volunteers to serve in Mwazisi; the first one being my replacement Prashanth, who is finished and back home now, a the second Kristen an English teacher who is there now.   Also in the time since I left some of my students at the secondary school have moved on from Mwazisi, while others have had children and are making families in Mwazisi like thier parents.  I also know that some of the people I loved very much have died.  I have to realize that a trip back to Mwazisi won't just be happy reunions,  there will also be hard realities to deal with.  But the good always comes with the bad.  No matter what, I am excited to get back to Mwazisi, and I look forward to sharing both the good and the bad from the entire trip.   

Back to Work in Mwazisi

I got back from home leave a little less than a month ago. It was great being home! I saw lots of people I love, played in the snow, and fully enjoyed the variety of creature comforts, food, and beer that America has to offer. But a month of leisure in the USA left my hands soft, my skin pale, and my heart a bit restless. I was happy to come back to Malawi in the midst of the chaos of the rainy season, and jump back into a full routine here.

I’ve said it before; I love the rainy season here! Life seems to spring from every hole, the landscape changes from brown and dusty to green and lush. Everybody is busy working away in their fields. Before sunrise I find my neighbours in the moonlight sleepwalking to their fields, jembe in hand, and sleeping baby strapped across their back. They’ll stay out their building ridges, planting, and weeding until a heavy rain falls, or the sun starts glaring down on the wet soil in all its steaming humid fury. Then most people will head back out to continue their work just as soon as the rain clears, or the afternoon sun cools enough to bear. Nobody seems stressed or rushing to get everything done but as their grain storages start to empty and Nyengo ya ngana ( time of hunger) sets in you can see a new determination and sense of urgency to produce food. This is when I most realize the difference between me and everybody else. For me farming is more of a pleasure and an ongoing experiment, but if my fields fail I’ll still be okay, but for everybody else it literally is their very livelihood.

I spent my first week back catching up on the rainy season work with my trusty helper Sam (my former secondary student, who started living with me while he finished up his last year of secondary school). We cleared the grass around my house that had grown up to my chest level and tilled new garden beds that we sowed vegetable seeds in. In the field we weeded all the maize and beans that we sowed before I left, and applied a chicken manure tea that has been curing for several months as a top dressing fertilizer for them. We finished ridging the other half of my field that I hadn’t gotten to yet. I inoculated about 5 KGs of cowpea seed with rizobium bacteria, which helps legumes to fix nitrogen into the soil. It occurs naturally in the soil, but there’s very little of the right bacteria for cow peas here because so few people plant them here anymore, despite the fact that it’s a very useful native crop. I planted cow peas in the rest of my ridges because hopefully it will make a great green cover crop that will continue growing and bearing fruit late into the dry season. I’m also going to try planting inoculated Pigeon Peas, though it’s a bit late for them. I think Pigeon Peas would be a great legacy to leave in my field; they grow as a tree that will live for 3-7 years, so if my replacement chooses not to farm, at least the land will still be productive, and the soil anchored.

Once I felt a bit caught up at home, I rounded up the guys and got back to construction of the office. We have worked hard for the past week and a half, 7:00am until sunset everyday, with just a short break for lunch. The long days have paid off though because we have made great progress. We have managed to finish the roof and all of the brick laying for beam filling minus about 39 iron sheets and about 100 bricks (I’m actually on my way to Mzuzu tomorrow to try to organize the last of the materials needed with the department of agriculture). We literally used every single last one of the 8,000 stabilized soil blocks that we moulded last year, so we will have to mould another hundred on Tuesday. I’m pretty impressed with how close our original estimation of the number of bricks was...we sure aren’t wasting materials here.

These past several weeks of work have really felt good. My old calluses are back, after a few red necked sunburns my old bronze has returned, and at the end of every day I turn on The Voice of America, to listen to my favourite music show “Border Crossings” while I scrub clean with a hot bucket bath, I don’t think there’s any better sensation in the world! Sam and I are both usually too tired to talk much while we wolf down soy pieces and nsima, or rice and greens.

I usually sit out behind my house while I brush my teeth before bed. I sit and scratch my dog Lucy’s belly while I look up at the stars, or watch the distant flashes of an oncoming thunderstorm. That’s one of my favourite rituals here, and it’s usually a time when I feel most appreciative for my life here. Before I left a returned Peace Corps volunteer told me to always remember the phrase “this too shall pass.” It works for all occasions; during the bad times you realize that they are going to pass soon so no need to worry, during the good times you know they are temporary, so really try to get the most out of them. Well now I’m realizing that my whole life here is going to pass. In three months I will no longer be a Peace Corps volunteer, and who knows if I’ll ever get back to Malawi again. This place that has been my home through good times and bad for the past three years will soon just be a memory to me. I feel like that realization has elated my senses. I try to memorize the sweet taste of every mango I eat from the tree in my field. I listen closely as the rain starts tapping on my tin roof at night anticipating the build up that will turn into the roar of a temporary downpour, and will just as quickly squeeze off its final trickle, leaving only the peaceful din of the crickets. I try to make the most of the warmth of every smile from my closest friends here, because I realize that the number of times I will feel that warmth from these individuals is now limited, and every night I spend a few extra minutes outside trying to imprint the glow of a perfect Mwazisi starry night in my mind.

Culture Shock

In the weeks leading up to my month home leave (a free trip home as a sort of prize for extending for a third year) it seemed everybody was telling me about the culture shock I was going to experience once I got back home. "You're going to freak out when you get back and see all the excess and waste...Nothings going to be the way you remembered it.....You won't even know how to talk to your own family and friends." I hadn't really thought much about any trouble readjusting to America, but the more people told me about it the more I began to feel a tinge of anxiety. It's been almost three years since I've been outside of Africa, I guess I could see how it's possible for me to have a hard time going back to the richest country in the world and slip right back in.

The culture shock came when I got to the Lilongwe airport. I was sitting in the terminal waiting to get on my first airplane since I came to Malawi. The TV on the wall was talking about Tiger Woods' personal life, and I was surrounded by white people talking about their 9-5 jobs, wedding plans, and the NFL playoffs...a big change from life in Mwazisi. As i started thinking about the trip I was embarking on my heart began racing, my breath got short, and I started thinking "oh man they're right, I'm not going to be able to relate to anybody. What am I going to do for a month if I can't even talk to my own friends." Then, other irrational panics came over me..."I'm going to miss a connecting flight along the way and get stuck in Johannesburg, The department of homeland security is going to bust me for the honey in my bag." I suddenly got very shifty and felt that everybody around me could see my extreme discomfort, and were judgeing away. I didn't say a word to anybody in the airport.

It wasn't until I was forced into conversation with my neighbors on the four flights home that I started to realize just how silly and comical my panic attack was. I had great wandering conversations about nothing with a whole assortment of good folks along my way. I was advised by a lovely thirty-something private investigator from Florida about what movies I needed to catch up on first. I talked to a young man from Wisconsin who had been backpacking all over Africa with his brother about his travels. I also chatted with a newlywed middle aged couple from Alabama who were on their way to Jackson Hole for a honeymoon, the sweet lady shared strips of beef jerky with me while her new husband told be about his beef ranch and how they fell in love as he brought his cattle to her family owned slaughterhouse. I listened happily as a hospital consultant from Minnesota told me all about her three sons that clearly were the light of her life. On the last leg home I talked to an environmental engineer from Grand Junction about fly fishing and and skiing.

With every conversation my anxiety seemed sillier and sillier. No matter where you go people are people, and you can always find a connection with a little effort, espechially when those people are from your home country. Talking to these folks about nothing really made me feel at home and cleared awayany nervousness. Americans are a mixed bag of people, and that's what makes us so interesting, in one flight you might have a western slope rancher on one side of you and an east coast civil rights lawyer on the other.

The past two weeks of being home have just been one great big confirmation of how much I love my home. Since coming home the highlights have been many, an ugly Christmas sweater party on Colfax that reunited me to many long lost high school friends, watching the Griz play in yet another national championship, a great week of skiing at steamboat thanks to the generosity of my brother, dancing in the dumping snow at a free Big Head Todd concert, randomly running into old friends and being able to fall back into our old banter without missing a beat, late night games of 500 with my family, holding my nephews in my lap while I help them put together great Lego creations, and spending time with my Aunt Kathy who doesn't let advanced MS or repeated trips to the hospital keep her from laughing and giving me hell. Just spending time with the people I love has been the main highlight....I've been away an awful longtime and it's good to be back.

So to other Peace Corps volunteers worried about going home and fitting in my advice is don't sweat it. I think the reverse culture shock hubub is bunk. I think ex-pats make a big deal about it so they seem more exotic and worldly. At least for me I feel like I've come home with a new appreciation for my home.

Last night I sat down with my parents to watch the Kennedy Center Honors on TV. I think it says a lot about America's appreciation for the arts when the President of the United States takes an entire night to honor a dedicated actor like Robert Deniro and an innovative Musician like Dave Brubeck. It also says a lot about our ability to find humor in anything that Mel Brooks the man who wrote songs like "Springtime for Hitler" for his play "The Producers" was also honored. We can see the beauty of our melting pot in the honoring of Grace Bumbry, a black women from St. Louis who sings classical opera. And finally we can see how much value we place on freedom of expression with the nomination of the boss Bruce Springsteen, because it's not so much his musical talent that makes him a legend but the way he writes songs that represent the left behind Americans. Songs like "Born in the USA" (people forget that that's a song about a Vietnam Vet who is mistreated by the government that sent him to war). I thought the whole show was a great example of what I love about America, we value our freedom of speech, our diversity, and our arts very much. The past three years in Malawi have showed me how rare it is to live in a country that holds those values sacred, and just how important those values are to me. So it's nice to get a little taste of that while I'm home.

Camp Nyika Day 4- Field Trip Day

The teaching was finished for us, so it was a great day for us to just sit back and watch the students have fun together. It's great to see after just 4 days together, how close the students who come from all over the Northern region have become. On the matola ride to Livingstonia I watched the students laughing and singing as they held onto each other for dear life as the truck hurled up and down the hills of the Phoka valley. Between songs Shadreck would lead the group in screaming random cheers like “Nyika camp is so beautiful!” or “Mr. Dan Ho-Yeaaaa!”We were entertained by Shupe Mzembe's sassy facial expressions as she reacted to every cheer before she buried her laughing face into her new friend Leah's shoulder. The truck driver had to make a stop at the Livingstonia hospital to pay a debt, while we waited Juma Nkhoma one of the smallest boys in the camp spotted some beautiful college aged nursing students, and reluctantly approached them with the encouragement of his friends. We all watched with great anticipation and cheered wildly when he managed to earn a smile from the very professional looking young women, and came running back with a smile of triumph.

Our first stop in Livingstonia was the beekeepers cooperative where the students learned about processing and marketing honey. We then went over to the old stone house museum for some history since it was the first time all of the students had been to Livingstonia aside for the three youth councilors who were with us last year. We took lunch at an overlook over Manchewe Falls. It was a great way to enjoy beans and rice, with the 300 foot plus waterfall on our left and the stretching lake shore below and the escarpment climbing up on our right,.

After lunch we visited the home of Leeza Dupree an expert in Permaculture design, Her assistant Alex gave us a detailed tour of the entire garden which contained many plants the students didn't know, but also many they knew very well, and planted themselves but never inter-cropped with so many different things. The main thing they all noticed was the abundance of perennial trees and crops that don't need replanting every season but continuously provide food so long as they are cared for.

From there we went to visit a similar farm of a Malawian women named Nya Bwindee who also relies on perennial crops like coffee trees, and Pineapple bushels. In fact her farm has over 2,800 pineapples, if they are sold at an average of 100MK, she's making a pretty impressive annual income from something she doesn't have to recultivate each season....sure beats tobacco. She originally acquired the land for free because everybody said that it's rocky soil and steep hillsides are useless, so she covered those hills with apple, peach, and lemon trees that provide a steady income as each different fruit comes into season. I think her place was one of the most useful sites we visited for the students, it really shows how anybody can make a good living from the land if they work hard and are willing to think outside of the box a little.

The whole idea of the camp was to bring the brightest and most interested wildlife club members together from all around Nyika and provide them with some useful skills and get them thinking about how they can live more in harmony with their land instead of degrading it. Hopefully they will take what they have learned back to their home communities and the ideas continue to spread.

The last morning as students were loading up on a Matola to head back to their various homes Atupele came running up to me with a folded up piece of paper; it was the poem she had read at the talent show, it cracks me up and deeply touches me all at once, here it is:

Bye, bye Dan
The night sky I have observed
The seven sisters not brothers
In the sky I have known and
I will not forget them.

Bye, bye Davie
How to plan I have known
Good record keeping I will do
The good work you have done
No one can believe it.

Bye, bye Mathias
Grafting crops I have known
That sugarcane can not be grafted you have taught me.
Quality fruits all over Malawi because of your knowledge.

Bye, bye tenley
Nursery making I have known
That chibuku packets can be used
Instead of polythene
The knowledge I have it's yours.

Bye, bye Devin
Fish farming I have learned
Scientific names of fish you have taught me
That zooplanktons are small animals
from seeds I know
Although they drive me crazy I will never leave the knowledge behind

Bye, bye Alinon
That a place is good if there is fun
I have believed in you
You really are a Fun-gi.

Bye, bye Nyika camp teachers
With different friends of different cultures we have met
Because they say no man is an island united we have stayed as one.
Ignorance you have buried.
I will never cut down trees carelessly
because it conserves soil
No words can express my cries.

Atupele Mbukwa

Not only did the students pick up some valuable lessons this week but they also had a lot of fun, and none of this would have been possible without the financial support of our family and friends who donated to the camp. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Camp Nyika Day 3- Banana and Bee Day

I started the day off in the classroom teaching beekeeping theory; including the benefits of beekeeping, as well as how to make a budget for getting started, the demensions of a 29 top bar box hive, and selecting an apiary to hang hives in once they are ready. I also talked about using local materials like maize sack suits, and bamboo hives instead of expensive planks.

After teaching theory we went outside and made a local materials hive as a group. We split bamboos and attached them to two end plates with rina (the wires pulled out of used tires) and nails through bottle top washers to permanently fix them into place. We baited the top bars with melted bee's wax and made a cradle out of eucalyptus branches to hang the hive. After finding a good site in a near-by forest we hung the hive and made a mixture of clay and cow dung to seal any gaps between the bamboo. After putting grass on the cover to keep the black plastic cool, and applying grease to the wires to keep the ants out, our hive was ready to be occupied! We snapped a few kung fu photos to celebrate.

Unfortunately my beekeeping took most of the day (I even teach at Dan speed!) So Matt only had a couple hours to do Banana propagation, which luckily was all he needed. He presented a very clear and straight forward demonstration of how to do split-comb propagation. He dug up a mature banana tree that hadn't fruited yet and cut it down to the core of it's root base. He then started hacking it into small chunks that we planted in a nursery with the same side facing up. After about 3 weeks of watering the nursery at least 10 shoots should have sprouted, each a clone of the original banana tree.

That night after dinner we had the Camp Nyika talent show, and Alinon decided that Elijah the natural born entertainer should be the MC for the event. Elijah did a stellar job, as did all of the students. Some of the most memorable performances included Shadrick Mwakasangira's word for word rendition of the Nas song “I can be whatever I want to be”, Paulina Gondwe (our only Form 1 student at the camp, who everybody called baby Paulina) smiling from ear to ear as she danced and sang a Chitumbuka church choir son, The Kaporo CDSS students doing the electric slide, the Mwazisi CDSS students doing a drama about fidelity, and a poem by Atupele Mbukasa thanking us for the camp. It was a very sweet poem and her kind words got me all misty eyed in front of the whole camp. The students weren't the only ones to perform. All of the teachers showed off our talents at once; Tenley worked out quadratic equations on the blackboard, while I reached back to my high-school basketball days to do some fancy dribbling with old soccer balls, Devin did his gangster crypt walk to an Akon song, Alinon juggled onions, and Matt pulled out his dentures to make the creepiest hand puppet I have ever seen. We were a 5 ring circus of odd Azungus! Then Alinon had the whole room hooting and hollering with an animated telling of the nursery rhyme “The old lady who swallowed the fly.” At the end of the show Al congratulated Elijah for being a great MC by giving him the giant straw top-hat he had been wearing the entire week with a slip of paper tucked into the brim's ribbon that said “Happy Fungi.”. Elijah wore it for the rest of the week with pride.

Camp Nyika Day 2 Agriculture Day

Devin Rippner my site-mate from Vwaza started the day off right with a very professional theoretical session on sustainable agriculture. Devin looking very dapper in his suit jacket and tie talked to the students about the value of good soil, and the benefits of maintaining its fertility and structure by adding compost and inter cropping nitrogen fixing trees. He talked a lot about the economics of conservation farming, and how they could save money by using compost and rotating a variety of crops instead of fertilizer and other inputs to grow just one crop.

After Devin's inspiring lecture the students visited a near-by lead farmer named Fredrick Msiska so they could see conservation farming in action. Mr. Msiska practices a wide variety of sustainable farming techniques in his fields and the students got some hands on experience as he invited them to help him mark the contour lines of a field using an A-frame with a line level across its top. They also got to make Bocash compost a Chinese method where they mix chopped maize husks, soil, wood ash, yeast, and water for fast decompisition in only about 21 days.

Mr. Msiska also showed us his demonstration plots where he mulches like a mad-man, intercrops nitrogen fixing trees and marks all of his boundaries with money making trees, like coffee or macadamia. He also showed the students his two chamber composting toilet which allows one side to decompose for 1 year while he is using the other side, when that side fills he clears out the decomposed chamber and starts using that side again. He also showed the students his liquid manure made by soaking chicken manure in water for 21 days, then dilutes the resulting tea with fresh water 20-1. He then uses that as a nitrogen rich top dressing for maize and tomatoes. It was really great for the students to see a Malawian who doesn't let anything go to waste on his farm, hopefully they take back some of these ideas to try and use in their own homes.

The afternoon was all about fish farming, and was mostly lead by Mr. Masukwa the Nchena chena fisheries extension officer. He started out by giving the students a long and detailed theoretical session that explained how to select a site for a pond, dig it, lime it, manure it, and stock it. He also talked about different types of fish as well as diseases that might become a problem.

After Masukwa's talk we went down to he research center's ponds to see the real thing. These ponds were first dug by the British in the 1950s and they are still very impressive today. There are over 20 ponds, the largest one is about the size of a football field, while the smallest one is about 5x10 meters. The ponds have a constant flow of water into their main inlet canal that allows water into each individual pond through a floodgate called a monk. Each pond also has angle jointed pipes that act as an overspill outlet, or can be turned down to drain the pond completely into the outlet canal. All of the ponds are stocked with talapia. The students were mostly impressed with the sheer size of the operation, the ones who were most serious about fish farming went back to the classroom afterwards and watched my compass II fish farming videos until dinner was ready.

After dinner our Ambassador of Fun Al organized a version of the game “Mafia” with a wildlife twist on it. He called it “Poacher Mob,” the Mafia were replaced by poachers, the sheriff was replaced by a forest guard, the doctor a traditional medicine man, and the citizens were different animals and trees of Nyika. I was amazed how fast the students picked it up, in no time they were tossing back and forth accusations and frantically trying to defend their innocence, “ I couldn't have killed the zebra he's my friend, and besides Moses is the real poacher.” The teachers only lasted a few rounds before Alinon turned the role of God over to Elijah Chipeta one of our outstanding and most gregarious youth councilors. I woke up a few hours later to go to the bathroom and still heard accusations flying in the classroom, “You killed the Msangu sangu tree! I can see it on your face!”

Camp Nyika Day 1- Buisness Day

Yesterday the students arrived throughout the afternoon to be greeted by our enthusiastic “Ambassador of fun” Alinon Arpin, a country boy from Ennis with a smile as big as his home state of Montana. The shy and somewhat nervous students were immediately drawn to his welcoming aora, and left feeling at home in this strange place. Al brought the whole group together for an ice-breaker. We tossed a Frisbee around so the bearer could give their name, number one environmental interest, and favorite dende (dinner dish). The rest of that night we let the students get acquainted with each other and get settled into their dorms.

This morning instead of jumping right into the environmental activities we had Dave Jock teach the students a few basic business skills. I introduced Dave to the kids as the smartest guy in Peace Corps (he's on his way to Harvard Law next fall), so the students were very happy to pick through his brain with a barrage of questions. Dave explained how to make a business plan taking into account any externalities, fixed and variable costs, and how many business cycles it would take to reach the break even point for a variety of businesses. Most of which we are teaching the skills for this week such as fish farming, beekeeping and soap making. His main advice for the students no matter what business they would embark on was to keep good records, and always plan to reinvest.

The second half of the morning was led by Nya Tembo a Malawian women who generously offered to teach the group how to make soap from palm oil. She taught in the matter of fact even keeled sort of temperament that Malawian women always seem to operate in....never too enthusiastic or too dour, always somewhere in the middle just working their way through whatever task is at hand. Making soap is just one more thing to add to a long list of things she's getting done. I thought it was really great for the girls at the camp to see a women who has found a business that nobody else in the community is practicing and make herself an expert in it so that she can carve out her own money making niche.

After lunch it was all trees! First Tenely Scofield a PCV who traveled all the way from Mulanje taught the basics of tree nurseries, then Matt Jones a “bad-ass logger” from Idaho taught the students how to graft fruit trees. Between Tenely's ever positive attitude and ardent support for everything the kids do, and Matt's hands on approach to teaching allowing each student to practice grafting themselves I think just about every student is ready to go start their own tree nursery.

That night after dinner I took advantage of the break in the clouds to lead the students in some star-gazing, I walked them through the northern constellations with my own rendition of the Greek story of Queen Cassiopeia and King Cepheus and their daughter Andromeda who was saved from the sea monster Cetus by the hero Perseus riding on his flying horse Pegasus. We also tried to spot the rings of Saturn through my binoculars, and took a closer look at the glowing wonder of the seven sisters. Many students stayed out well after the others went to bed asking me questions. I was all to happy to try to answer their curious questions and encourage them to let their imaginations roam about what might be out their in the infinity of space. I was also happy to stay up to see Orion rise so I could share with them my all time favorite constellatioion.