More elephant pics because they are the cutest.

 Look at his lil face! This guy (gal?) is about 5 years old according to our guide.

 So elephants are pretty much always eating.  Apparently this is because elephants just poop right out 60% of their food undigested.

Fifty points if you can spot the lions! Hint: they are a sort of blue/grey with an orange mane.

I accidentally got caught up watching the lions instead of taking pictures. No regrets. Go see your own lions and take better pictures. 

Safari! I went on a game drive in Majete game reserve about an hour outside of Blantyre.  I have about 200 pictures of elephants now so if you are interested in having a picture of an elephant of any age doing anything, I can probably fill any customized requests. Here is a sampling of what I saw. 

It's a zebra! He had a friend with him but I could only see his butt.  Zebra butt is cool but maybe not the most picturesque. 

So cute, fancy stripes, fancy eyes, fancy horns, fancy dude. I forget what he's called. 

 Everyone was taking pictures of the pack of baboons on the other side of the car. Meanwhile me and this lil buddy had a moment. 

 This is an eagle. A specific kind of eagle that our guide told us all about.  I don't remember anything about it, sorry. He was real big though, like big big, like probably 3 feet tall. 

 Look how cute her ears are. This is the lady version of the guy with the white under his eyes.  They are super shy, this was the only one I could catch standing still. 

This elephant was not super happy with us. She came running at the car and flapped her ears and stomped at us a bit. Then she went about her way. 

 We took an evening boat ride, with wine! I wanted to include at least the one picture I am in to prove that I was actually there. 

 Hippos! Our guide told us that hippos open up their mouths like that because they are proving to god that they are not eating any fish. I guess god was like, you all are very mean and aggressive, you can't hang with the other animals, and so the hippos promised to live vegan. 

 The sun set over the river. It was kind of pretty. 

Story time: After dinner, around 8pm, I realized I left my phone charger out in the car. There is a rule at the lodge we stayed in, which is in the middle of the game reserve, that you can't walk around without an escort. We had only parked about 20 yards outside the the restaurant, so I decided to go alone. I'm standing at the car, looking around at the pitch black, and thinking how scary it would be to be stuck out there alone. Then I hear some rusting in the bushes about 20 yards farther out into the woods.  I stop and stare, trying to convince myself it is just the wind. It gets louder, I decide it is just a warthog, it gets louder and I see the bushes shaking.  Finally an elephant just pops out into the opening. I literally run back to the restaurant, and into the light. I call everyone over to watch and a whole parade of elephants come out of the woods! They made their way past the cars to the watering hole that was 50 yards from the lodge.  Finally I thought to take a picture but they were far and in the dark. Anyway it was pretty much the coolest thing I have ever seen. 

Warthogs! Fun fact, they are called pumbas!

These were my favorite, and super hard to get a picture of. They are so fluffy and have the cutest ears. I love them.  I will find out what they are.

More pictures tomorrow. The internet could only sustain so many at once.  Also maybe I'll fill in some actual animal names. 

Ok good internet today since I decided to sleep in and everyone else in the lodge took off early to go on adventures.  Not me, I'm washing underwear and eating peanut butter toast! Actually tomorrow I'm heading off on a safari! So look forward to seeing those pictures in like a month because I suck at this.

Anyway, I got to sit in on this really cool workshop for people involved in hearing/ear health in Malawi. We were trying to figure out why so many people are lost to follow-up and never come in to the hospital to get the treatment they need.  The consensus was mostly transportation, not feeling like hearing is important, the prevalence of ear infections makes people think they are just normal (like everyone has had enough terrible infections to have perforations and constant draining), and a general fear of/bad experiences with hospitals.  And good news, we fixed all those problems in the meeting and now everything's fine! Ha, no but it was good to get a lot of important people on the same page, we will see what comes next.  

All this hard work earned me a weekend at Lake Malawi. This was the view while laying in my bed.  It was kind of nice.  We had a group of 15 or so and we rented out a whole bunch of pretty little cottages on a private beach. We fancy.  

 

Lake Malawi at sunset, it's beautiful. 

 Lake Malawi in daytime, it's beautiful. 

 There are around 30 people staying in the lodge I am currently living in (until I find an apartment, which is HARD), and we form a little makeshift family.  There was a birthday this week so we had a little party with banana cake (it's banana bread but everyone else insists that Americans call things bread that are actually cakes, because we are fat and gluttonous, whatevs). 

There was a minibus strike yesterday.  I haven't taken a picture of in a minibus yet, but for those of you who have not had the pleasure (my Peace Corps pals will remember it well) a minibus is essentially a minivan that has been modified with 4 rows of seats.  The strike (maybe, there are a lot of conflicting stories) is over some new regulations that say you can only put 3 people in each row. That is how many people really should be able to fit there, however, common practice is to put 4-5 per row, plus 2-3 squat/sitting on a little ledge facing backward behind the driver.  Road accidents are extremely common here and there have been at least 20 deaths that have made the news in the last month. Anyway the minibus drivers went on strike and shut down some major roads with tire fires. 

Since there were no minibuses running, there were no patients yesterday. Basically everyone takes the minibuses, there are not really any more formal means of transportation and very few people have cars.

To fill our no patient time, we went next door to visit the new Madonna sponsored pediatric ward.  They are almost ready to open and there are lots of cool murals and it's generally looking really good. I liked this girl best. 

These are two of the audiologists I work with. Regina is on the left and Chiko is on the right.  They are super sweet and funny and wanted to do a photoshoot "to send to Madonna so maybe she will adopt us." Chiko has been very patiently helping me to learn Chichewa and keeps me on a strict 3 new phrases per day routine. 

The Big Board of Organization! The whole year is planned out which is borderline stressful for me, also it is very nice that I can remind myself six times a day that I have something to do tomorrow, and write it down, and still have to text the night before to make sure I have it right.  I am not a good planner. 

Martini Monday with Malawi Gin and South Africa Olives.  Not a bad view, not that it ever is. 

Misty mountains at breakfast this morning.

Ugh I'm terrible I know, excuses already. I think it is ok to admit that I am not going to be able to do a picture a day. The internet here is not internetting very well, and I'm never sure when it will suddenly decide to work.  It seems to work best around midnight, when everyone is already asleep, but I have to leave my little room and brave the mosquitos and cold rainy nights to get to the spot where there is access.  So I don't do that.  You will all just have to live off the scraps I give you! (And by you all I probably just mean my mom and dad checking multiple times a day)

Anyway I went on a lovely little weekend trip to Dedza.  I climbed mountains (I'm VERY outdoorsy now) and saw cave painting and baboons.

On the road to the mountains. We rented a nice four wheel drive car for the weekend, and still basically died.  This was a medium quality road.  We also got mildly lost and confused quite a few villagers by trying to drive down "roads" that were really paths to a grazing field. 

  This is our lovely view from lunch at our lodge. I had moussaka. The lodges here are not big on serving local food.

 We climbed a bit of a mountain and did a bit of exploring with a basic map and successfully found one of the caves with old old paintings.  Old old, that is all the info I have in my brain. Look it up yourself lazy people, Dedza Rock Art, it's cool and old.

 This is some of the rock art itself, it's just behind me as I stand at the mouth of the cave in the previous and next photo.  There were many more in the cave, and I have no idea what most of them are trying to represent. It's probably even harder to see in the picture, but whatever you see, you totally see it right?! A giraffe is supposed to be involved in some way.  I might actually link an explanation here at some point if I have internet again, but I don't want to risk opening another page now. 

 More views from the mountain cave. It was amazing, like, taking pictures just makes you mad because you can't see half as far or half as many colors kind of amazing.

 We found Pride Rock. So of course we joint Lion Kinged our backpacks.

There were baboons! Baboons!! Probably baboons. Are they baboons? Any monkey experts looking at this? There are a couple right on the edge of the sheer side of the rock and under/in the tree.  There were many yelling at each other and running around. I had plans to throw my backpack at the slowest member of our group and run if they got any closer.