Carpentry and Rice and Iron Chef, Oh My!

August 3^rd, 2013

Unfortunately, we are now in our last week in Malawi.  We have seen and done so much, and time is moving so quickly!  This week we finished our bricklaying work at Kazembe Primary School, and have now begun the carpentry phase of the construction project.  We bought all the materials in Salima, but back in Lifuwu we still had to prepare some planks to be used for the doorframes.  Here is a shot of our friend Moses and me preparing planks with a circular saw.  I’m pretty handy, you know!

 

On Tuesday a friend of ours from church named Brian invited Kim and me to see his agricultural research station just north of Lifuwu.   

 

As someone who studied the geography of agriculture, I found it fascinating.  Brian collects samples of hundreds of rice cultivars from around Malawi and the world to see how they perform under different circumstances.  Here is one shelf of different rice varieties.

 

In the lab they perform some crossbreeding techniques to select for different traits in the rice—mainly yield and flavour.  Here is what the lab looked like.

 

In addition to the lab where they analyze the rice, they also have a farm where they see how well the rice grows in the soil near Lifuwu.  Right now is the planting season, so here is what their rice field look like right now.

 

On Thursday, I organized an “Iron Chef” night at the guesthouse.  For those of you who don’t know what Iron Chef is, it is a cooking competition, where two teams have one hour to cook a meal using a “secret ingredient”.  Our secret ingredient was “vegetarian option”.  My team (Kim, Maria and me) was on the stovetop, and this is the plate of food that we made: stuffed eggplant in a marinara sauce, “iggy in a basket” with dry rubbed steak, and a banana custard parfait.

 

The other four volunteers were cooking on the grill.  Here was their plate: veggie burger on a bun and shish kebobs.

 

We had Francesca, the help2Kids coordinator, and our friend, Moses, judge the plates: 20 points for taste, 10 for presentation, and 10 for originality.  The other team had more points for presentation (Francesca thought that we did not provide enough food), but our team won because we had better taste.

 

All in all, it was another perfect week.  We are really trying to enjoy our last few days here, even if we feel a little sad about having to leave soon.  We will keep you all posted about our last few days in Malawi, but we will still have one week on Zanzibar, so stay tuned for more adventures!