Home sweet home! We came back to Namitete this week after lots of hectic travel. We also moved into some new housing back here in Namitete. We are now living in the hospital’s guesthouse with lots of other German visitors and we are definitely wishing we knew how to speak some German.
It was a big week here in Namitete because the president of Malawi, Dr. Joyce Banda, came to visit St. Gabriel’s to open the new Outpatient Department. The celebration started at the hospital where Banda was greeted both with the church choir from the hospital as well as her party supporters who follow everywhere she goes. Her supporters are all decked out in bright orange and they sing and dance for hours before the president even arrives. Giant orange busses rolled through Namitete with “People’s Party” written on the side. After the president arrived and toured the hospital there was a huge rally and celebration at the primary school across from St. Gabriel’s. This celebration was HUGE. I think every person from here to Zambia came out to the rally. There was tons of dancing and chanting and yelling and general mayhem. Many people gave short speeches, very few of which were in English and then the president spoke which once again was mostly in Chichewa. We didn’t really know what she was saying but people were laughing a lot so we assume it was good. Once she was done speaking, the real celebration broke out. There were some traditional dances that involved some wild costumes and a lot of yelling and singing. It was a really cool experience to be in Namitete when the president visited, I think people will be talking about this for quite a while.
The next day, it was back to work as usual doing DataPall and working on some things for the Community Health Volunteers. This weekend we are going to Lake Malawi and we will be meeting up with the Blantyre interns once again. We’ve heard the lake is gorgeous and I can’t wait to see it in person!
Also sorry for how late this post is, my blog has been fighting with me lately.