Day's Diary

Febraury 13, 2007 ~ Adventure or Challenge?

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Life in Malawi is either an adventure or a challenge, depending on how you look at it. There are plenty of opportunities everyday to decide which it will be. I made the decision within the first week here to determine that God was giving me adventures. There have been several of them in the past week.

Last Thursday, when I still hadn’t heard from the internet fellow, Silas and I decided to try and find him and get an answer about the date of the service installation. We went to the office for Globe Internet and there were three people in the office, none of whom I had seen before. This seemed unusual, since the fellow had told me his was a one person office. When we asked them about the installation, they looked surprised and said they had no orders for new service, and they were the installation team. When I told them the date I had been in and ordered the service, they asked for the fellow’s name and I gave it to them. They began talking amongst themselves – not a good sign, from my perspective. I asked what the problem was and they told me they had the fellow arrested for stealing from another potential customer. They didn’t know anything about my situation. We filled in all the details and they are turning it over to the police. In the meantime, we are negotiating about my service, since I have paid for it, but they don’t have the money. Silas is emphatic that it is their problem, not mine and that they need to make good on it. We are providing them with my documentation (a receipt of sorts and copy of the canceled check), and are waiting until the end of this week for their response. In the meantime, I am still using the internet café.

Thursday I went to the internet café, after our visit to the Globe office, and discovered a pleasant surprise. I had ordered a Bible software package before I left the U.S. but it had not arrived. When it did, Mike Carlini, from my church, sent it to me via FedEx (yes, FedEx in Malawi!) and it arrived in good time. I was thrilled, only to discover that to install it, I needed the old edition of the software, since this was an upgrade. I didn’t have it on my laptop, which is what I have here. I emailed Sandy Codding, my clerk of session and good friend, and asked her to call the company and see what she could do. The email I received was from the software company and they had a special download for me that would do the trick. I went back to the internet café on Friday with my large jump drive and was able to download the software in just an hour of internet time. I came home and joyfully installed the download and then was able to do the upgrade. Thanks to Mike and Sandy and the software company, I have a wonderful “Pastor’s Library” at my finger tips on my laptop. The whole process, from order to installation, took two and a half months, but I have it and I praise God for it.

I was eager to share the benefit of this wonderful program with my colleagues, so after classes Monday, in the pouring rain, I rushed home to get my laptop and take it to the staff offices for them to see. I walked in the front door and was met by a flood of water in the dining room that was beginning to make its way into the living room. Thoughts of the computer program floated away as I investigated the flooding. The water was coming from the ceiling in the hallway and had poured onto the floors in the hallway, the bathrooms and dining room and was working its way into bedrooms and the living room. Now, this is when I rejoice that there is no carpeting in my house, only concrete floors that mop well. I quickly pulled furniture out of the way of the water, called for Ella, my house help, and began mopping. As I was mopping, one of the faculty members came to my door to say that maybe we should postpone the software demonstration because of the increasing storm, which now was sporting thunder and lightening. He saw the flood and realized the demonstration was already cancelled. I just hadn’t had time to tell him. He pitched in and investigated the source of the streaming water and called the maintenance man, who came promptly. I think it was Stephen’s phrasing of “mass flooding” that had something to do with the prompt response time. The maintenance man kept shaking his head and repeating that this was not good. I knew that. He climbed up in the ceiling access to the pipes and investigated more closely, while Ella and I continued to mop. A pipe in the ceiling from the geezer (African hot water heater) had ruptured. He turned off the water to the geezer and reported that it would need to be replaced, since it had no shutoff valve and that was what caused the rupture. I would have to report this to the principal and he would then tell the maintenance man if and when he could do the work. So I finished mopping and went to the principal and made my report. He apologized for the inconvenience and promised that they would get to it as quickly as possible, but first he would have to find the treasurer and determine how much money was in the maintenance account. He went to find the treasurer and I came home to finish drying out the house. I will be without hot water for at least three days, a conservative estimate, but at least I have cold water, and I can heat water on the stove, and the flooding had been cleaned up.

Life is an adventure. Life in Malawi is a great adventure.