Garbage, Offerings and Possible Hippos

First of all, I need to give a shout out to Amy . I think she gets MVP for letters and care packages. As Brian addressed in the entry below, she asked us to blog about what we do with our garbage. I just wanted to add to what Brian wrote that the waste we do produce here is significantly less than what we produced in America. While plastic bags are everywhere, things aren't packaged like they are at home. I would also say that a large portion of our waste is organic and is just thrown into the compost pile. We also try to reuse things like peanut butter jars and powdered milk tins to put things in. We may also start planting seedlings in them. So really the moral of the story is, for all of you who really want to send us M&Ms, send them in some type of reusable container. Ha!
We have been enjoying this time off of school. We had some friends come to our site for Easter. It was fun to have others in our group see how we live and compare stories.
We also made it to Good Friday and Easter services, which was really nice. No need for pipe organs here. This singing is incredible. It almost makes up for the other hour and half of sermon and announcements in Chichewa. I am still processing a situation that happened to me on Sunday. Knowing there would be an offereing collection we thought ahead to bring some money. We were each planning on putting 200 Kwacha (about $1.50) in the collection plate. While that is not a lot at home, it is a lot here to both villagers and us on our Peace Corps stipend. Since we had only been to church once since we got here and it was Easter we thought we should give a little more. Anyway, I had tucked the bill into my friend's little English Bible because I had no pockets. Brian told me I was going to loose it but I was determined to proove him wrong. During the middle of the service our headmaster's three year old daughter came and squeezed in between me and my friend, Angela, causing the bible to fall on the floor. The people behind me picked it up and gave it back to me. When it came time for the offering I noticed my money was gone and it was nowhere on the floor. I was really upset that someone would steal my offering money at church of all places! I have made peace with it as Angela reminded me that it is still an offering and to whoever took it obviously needed it.
After Easter, we traveled to our friend, Spencer's, site in Kasungu. We spent a couple days there with Spencer's girlfriend who just came from the States, Jessica and Ian. The climate in Kasungu is much nicer than Salima and I was very excited to actually need my sleeping bag at night. After we leave Lilongwe we are also planning on traveling with this same group to Liwonde National Park, Zomba Plateau and Blantyre. Keep your fingers crossed for some hippo pictures on the next post.