July is here!!!!

It is here, can you believe that it is already July?

We celebrated the 4th of July at the American ambassadors place, Hambergers and hotdogs! And lots of desserts!!!






Alicia and Matt


May



Brian and Kristie Rolig and Brian Kennedy



At the primary school again, this child is processing hybiscus by pulling off its pettles for washing and drying then keeping the seed pods...

More after school activities, tin smithing...





The shire river


this photo is a little out of focus but really cool, it has hippos, a water buck posing in front of a rock and some birds on the left.


This elephant was photogenic

hippos



I had to get this photo, our neighbor put out their infants socks and diaper on dried grasses...



We made some gardens (in bags)around the house! We hope this prevents the sweeping from knocking our house down...




Shawna this is for you, orchid tree flowers!

June in three posts... sorry

The Women's group I work with...


We are working with an NGO called HELP Malawi. They built a primary school and are needing to build more buildings like an administration and library but first a church. The land was donated by a local village church. The village church actually housed classes while the school was being built, but last rainy season the mub brick, grass thatched building collapsed. Peace Corps has a stablized soil block press so we are barrowing it so that HELP Malawi can use it to make bricks. The traditional style of brick making is done by lots of mud and water pressed into molds then they are sun dried and stacked for firing. They burn an enormouse amount of trees in order to fire them so we introduced this press that requires little water, and a mix of clay, sand, and cement (like 10 to 2 to 1)then they slow dry covered in grasses and watered daily... no firing. Also the press we have make interlocking bricks so no morter requiried!

Dan is another Peace Corps Volunteer who came to Malawi when we did, he has also extented for a third year. He has used a stablized soil block machine/press in his village and so came to teach the HELP Malawi people as well as ourselves to use the press.


they screwed on two long boards and burried them in the ground to hold the press in the ground. Bryan is standing by the lever that is pushed up and on the other end people pull down to press the bricks.

The group that learned to use the press. Mostly employees of HELP Malawi. When they make the bricks for the church (which they are actually doing now) these people work with and teach volunteer members from the church to help them.


Another project on campus is getting water to everyone. So they have two large tanks, we were around when they attempted to get the second one up on the tower... it didn't go so well...

They (the Malawians) kept tying slip knots that was, well, look! I wish Ryan were here to show them a proper knot!


after an unsuccesfull try they sent someone in to bang back out the round tank into its round form.


Last week we outplanted a whole planter into its own guild. Bryan and I designed it as a tea garden/guild... the permaculter class helped (as well as many other) to plant the garden.


Often Matt and David give tours around the school to visiting tourists staying at the local lodges, this group Matt asked Bryan to do alot of the explaining for the garden... now he helps in most of the tours talking about permaculture.



Across the river where our HELP Malawi friends live we found a black mamba. It was in one of the offices and had already been killed, so Bryan decided to make use of it, we had to choose between eating and art (neclaces, bracelets). And so we decided on not eating this one. Look at the length! Bryan is even standing on a crate!

So Matt helped Bryan skin it and well here they are holding the two parts...

They pinned the skin to a board to dry...
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and burried the body so that nature can do its thing to clean the bones. We will then dig it up in a few months and use the vertebrae for making jewlry, isn't that what you want to wear? Mamba?!


Our neighbor boy (6th born) Jeramiah (but they call him Mia), he was tired...


Two beautiful bee eaters