Fourth Letter from Africa November 22, 2004
Greetings from Africa,

We got off to a good start with our letter writing but lost enthusiasm when it became apparent that many of our e-mails didn't get through to the recipients. If you haven't recieved "Greetings from Africa" 1, 2 and 3 then you will now know why you haven't heard from us. Could you please drop us a line if you receive this one.

It's hard to believe we will be back in Australia in just over three weeks! We leave here on the 15th Dec and arrive in Perth on the 16th. Our return flights are booked for 2nd Jan. Our three main events in the meantime are to organise a Christmas party for about 250 children at the Kayelekera (minesite) village, find a house to move to in the in the new year.and make the 6-7hr trip down to the capital (Lilongwe) to meet Rina when she arrives on Dec 1st. She will spend a week with us here in Karonga before starting her assignment in Mangochi on Dec 8th. We're really looking forward to seeing Rina again and showing her our part of Malawi. Some of the Malawian staff will help us find a suitable house and then Paladin takes care of the rental contract.

The last few weeks have been a good time for making new friends, trying to learn some of the local language and becoming part of the community. We have started attending the english service at the Presbyterian church, had four neighbouring ladies over for afternoon tea and attended a thanksgiving mass, feast and party at our neighbours house (went on until the wee hours of the morning!!). We had a visit from 2 bored volunteers who invited us to visit and gave us a grand tour of a nearby Catholic campus (high school and Tech college) where they and 4 other American young people work. We then enjoyed a delicious meal of hamburgers and cake! They are such a nice enthusiastic and dedicated bunch (3 guys and 3 girls) and we were really impressed with scale and scope of the work there.

We have been working with local ladies at Kayelekera to plant an irrigated vegie garden with mixed success - some of the seeds just didn't come up! :( The produce will be a drop in the bucket of what will be needed but it gives them a chance to be involved and earn some money, also a good opportunity for us to get to know them and get in some language practice.

We have been looking at warehouses to rent so we can set one up with a cool room, freezers etc. to store meat and vegetables for the supply line to the mine. We've chosen a warehouse now and are going through he process of sorting out a contract. It will need to be cleaned out and painted, new windows put in etc, but with the cool room, freezers, ute and freezer truck all on order it looks like its' coming together now.

We have been interviewing applicants over the last few weeks and today our new Agricultural Community Liaison Officer (Assistant!) started working for us - his name is Stafford Kaluba, a local man about our age with extensive horticultural knowledge and experience.

The locals were predicting an early start to the wet season but there have only been a few light showers since the heavy downpour on Oct 23rd. The weather is continuing to be hot (35oC maximums indoors) and very humid, but we're surviving with our trusty little fan blowing most of the night!.

We're hoping to catch up with most of you over Christmas.

Warm regards, Chris and Anne