Feb 22nd:

Finally caught up on some sleep last night and ready for the task of working with the SACCO’s in Malawi again this year. After breakfast we had a short meeting at the MUSSCO office just down the street from the hotel, then Brad, Dennis, Kati, Dixon, and I headed out on the road to Dwanga. The trip to Dwangwa took about 3 hours of traveling on a narrow highway with lots of Malawia people walking, biking, etc. on both sides of the road. Dixon, our driver did an excellent job of weaving his way through the pedestrians and the on coming traffic. We met with Davison, the GM of the Dwasco Employee's SACCO and met some of the support staff, then headed over to the Kasasa club for some much needed food. We were all starving as we had not had anything to eat since breakfast in Lilongwe, and it was now after 3:00 PM. I had the local fish (Chambo) and it was fantastic. They served breaded fillets rather than frying up the whole fish with head and all like I experienced last year. After lunch, Brad and I said goodbye to Kati, Dennis and Dixon as they were heading over to Mzuzu for the night. Davison then drove us over to the Ngala Beach resort where we will be staying for the next few days. He introduced us to Sandy and Chris, the owners of the resort, and they are a very friendly couple that like to visit and find out all about their visitors to the resort. We have a beautiful view of Lake Malawi just outside the door of our Hut, and the scenery here is like what you might see at a tropical resort. We checked into our rooms, and they were quite hot and humid, so we headed to the bar for a couple of beers and sat around and chatted with the ownersand some of the patrons for a few hours. The humidity is going to take a little getting used to, as they have had lots of rain here, and even without sun, the humidity is 100%. Oh, we have monkeys! They are seen scampering about in front of the bar area which overlooks the lake…..they are cute, but according to the owners can be quite the pests. We have no internet here so will be doing some blogging on word and can hopefully put it on the site tomorrow at the SACCO.