Sika | May 11, 2009
For reasons that are fundamentally minor and that I don’t really want to remember anyway, I was having a crappy, ill-prepared morning. I spent some of the morning crying (don’t worry, not much) and a large portion of it in an exhausted, irritated funk. I believe, at one point, I actually said to my first [...]
Sika | May 8, 2009
Today I had the students role play teaching their patients about atelectasis* More than one of them said, this is a disease which will lead to death if you don’t do what I say, or something to that effect. I told them to use plain English: so, I got, “Atelectasis is a disease which can [...]
Sika | March 18, 2009
Lectures start up next week again. I’ve got 4 topics, but I did 2 of them last year and one of the other 2 is related to one that I did last year. For the second years, I have two topics coming up, but I’ve done both of them before, so it shouldn’t be too [...]
Sika | February 27, 2009
I’m getting on the overnight bus tonight so I can be in Mzuzu sometime between 3 and 6 am tomorrow, so Michelle and I can maybe go to Livingstonia this weekend and definitely go on the MV Ilala on Monday. We’re going to Likoma, the island in the middle of Lake Malawi that’s in Mozambican [...]
Sika | January 16, 2009
I haven’t really talked much about what I’m doing at work. I was getting ready to write about South Africa, and I realized that I should probably write about a little more than my holidays. I’ve actually gotten quite busy with work at work. Sometimes I don’t even have time to read Mike’s missives [...]
Sika | November 18, 2008
David was complaining to Flora that it is too hot* and how he wanted the rains to come. Flora’s response: The rains aren’t coming because people are still burning bricks (to cure them and make them usable). David thought she was joking and laughed but she wasn’t. She explained that the bricks require heat and [...]
Sika | November 11, 2008
Do not get pregnant. Do not give others pregnancy. Each room [in the hostels] has two keys. You and your friend get one. I keep the other one so I can come in whenever I want and snatch a hotplate or find your illegal visitors. Some people, especially the men, like to go around at [...]
Sika | November 10, 2008
We finally finally got our new class of first years. Only 6 weeks late. The drama was this: The University of Malawi couldn’t decide how they were going to pick which students to select. The options were to base selection on merit only or on merit and region, recognizing that some areas get more slices [...]
Sika | November 10, 2008
I went back to NOC a while ago to do a vertical garden training with the guardians and the home health volunteers. While I was there, we reviewed weighing and charting and I took the pictures I didn’t get before because of the failure to bring my camera. So this post will be mostly pictures [...]
Sika | October 7, 2008
I got there late because my tires needed pumping. I knew I had loaned my pumps to Sarah and David, respectively; I knew I had to get to NOC last Wednesday; I knew I always need to inflate the tires a bit when I haven’t ridden my bike in a while. I still forgot to [...]
Sika | July 22, 2008
Last saturday, sometime between 1 and 3am, our kitchen and cafeteria (called kef in Chichewa) burned up (not down, as the building is still intact). No one was hurt. ESCOM says that the reason why the kef burned up is that the kitchen staff forgot to turn off the outlets to the cooker or whatever*. [...]
Sika | March 27, 2008
Plans changed and I’m back at school now, even though the students are gone. It’s really more of a long, boring story than I want to go into, so I won’t. The upside is that we may actually be able to sort through all our lectures next week and get the academic secretary, Esther, started [...]
Sika | March 20, 2008
The school is closing for the easter holiday, and the campus director said our department could close as long as we had all the work done for the rest of the block before tomorrow. So, last weekend and this week I wrote 6 lectures, marked 72 short papers on atelectasis and 72 exam questions. The [...]
Sika | February 26, 2008
I yelled at my students today. I do this thing: usually I stay at the front of the classroom, it being quite difficult to amble down the “aisles” between the 74 desks in my class. But if the students aren’t answering my questions I squeeze my way between the desks and pick on individual students. [...]
Sika | November 8, 2007
This week I have gotten into full swing of teaching. I have 4 lectures this week, have done 2 practicals, and have invigilated 2 exams (doesn’t that sound dirty? I always feel like I need a shower after I say I’ve been invigilating. Jackie and I had a disagreement about which sounds dirtier—invigilating or proctoring—that [...]
