Today, sadly, marked our last day in the villages. It began bright and early so that we could get water samples to Chancellor College in a timely manner for quality testing from Mphero’s two borehole wells we drilled last year and Chilimani’s three water sources. At Chancellor College, we were greeted with a warm welcome into their Chemistry/Biology department to do microbial and chemical testing. While there, they were kind enough to show us the ropes of the microbial testing, letting us help measure out agar samples and heating them before they were introduced to the samples. We made some new friends in the lab techs working there – it seems like it’s hard to find someone we don’t like in this beautiful country.
After another long wait for a Tasty Bite, we split up into groups – Emma and Jordan went to meet with Paul Jones, a member of Rotary International who had some insight for our projects and our future prospects at Rotary.
And Ashley and I went back for one last visit to Chilimani where Martha met us (to our delight!). While we were away at our meetings, some community members were helping us lay a small square of cement on the four sites we had identified for possible boreholes. Once those were laid, we were able to better measure the distance of the wells to significant landmarks, like to the main road or something like a large clump of trees – anything that would help us identify it on a map later on. We wanted to get a better sense of where these boreholes would be in the community so that the most people would benefit from its location.
This was all finished much too soon which meant we had to say our goodbyes to the community members and our cherished interpreter, Martha, whom we all had gotten to know well in our short time here. Before we left, we paid a visit to the chief, to thank him for welcoming us into his community and working with us in this partnership that we’ve established. On our way out, they gave us some sugar cane to eat on our journey home – at least there was something sweet about this goodbye. We each gave Martha one last hug before climbing into the van back to the farm. With sugar canes in hand and tears in our eyes, we waved goodbye to our “Malawian Sister” and the community that had come to feel like home.
Tionana Chilimani, until next year.
Becca