Quotes and Diary Extracts

Muli Bwanji!

I'm in an internet cafe in Blantyre so I can't spend too much time writing this blog post (living on a budget and all) but according to Catriona I'm pretty good with one-liners that sum up our life at the moment, so I've been recording some of the good'uns and promised to but them on the blog:

"Now I get why clowns wear white make-up! Apparently, white faces are hilarious."
(When we first arrived in our village, a group of children saw us inside the minibus and started pointing and laughing. There's also a playground right outside our house and whenever we return home the kids there wave, laugh and chant "Azungu", which means "white person")

Catriona: I hate you!
Louise: I'm not too keen on you either.
Catriona: What?
Louise: I was talking to the roof too, but I'm not as forceful as you are, and I don't like to say I hate people, even when people are roofs.

(When the wind blows (which it does a lot) our tin roof makes an awful screechy metal noise, which it turns out is the sound of part of the roof being lifted up and then dropping down again, I wrote about our solution to this in my diary:)

"As I stood there, gaffer-taping the roof down, I thought to myself, 'It's student night in Ormskirk. My friends will probably be in a club right now, and I'm here, trying to tape the roof onto my house'"

I'm sure there's more, but I don't have my diary with me at the moment! As for the volunteer work, we're still getting into the swing of things at the moment, but the orphanage and the children there are all amazing! They have such good manners and I was so impressed when we went to watch them doing a street performance about HIV. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into work at the Samaritan Trust.