One of the joys of being married to an artist, is that my artist accentuates life in her paintings and shows me things I never would have noticed on my own. If any of you out there are not yet married, I highly recommend that you look into finding yourself an artist as well.

Last month Marissa and I took a long 24 hour train ride across the whole of Tanzania. As we watched the plains and mountains and villages of Africa pass by for hours, we were asking ourselves things like: “Why does this land seem so beautiful?” and “Why is it that I feel like I could stare at this countryside for hours on end and never become tired of it?”

I am skimming a book by David Bornstien called "How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas". Somehow I have managed to get past the incredibly modest title and short introduction yet still have no idea what a Social Entrepreneur actually is... but we can come back to that
in a later blog.

The book begins with a discussion of the explosive expansion of the Non-profit (NGO) sector in recent years. Both the number of organizations and the amount of money invested in the non-profit sector have increased greatly since 1960. This "explosion" of non-profits is something that you can't ignore living in Malawi (especially when you travel to Lilongwe, the capital city) ... non-profits are everywhere. There is an acronym and organization for every type of social cause you can imagine, even the ones you could never have imagined. The only one i havent seen is an NGO to help other struggling NGOs. But i am sure its on the way.

I am deeply impressed by the strength of people’s souls in this place. Jon and I are have settled down enough, that we interact with Malawians on a daily basis and are developing many friendships along the way. We have noticed that as we get more and more integrated into the community, death seems to take a stronger and stronger presence. Just the other day we realized that it had been more than 2 days since hearing about the death of one person or another connected in some way to our friends or colleagues. Learning to deal with death on a daily bases is hard, but what I find more challenging is learning to grasp how my Malawian friends go on living life with such joy, such strong spirits, always so helpful, always with a smile.

I think that I have found my dream job. Directly across from Mzuzu University, down a dirt road, through a corn field you will find the Ungweru Community Center. There you will find nice 4 computers, the latest news papers, sodas and cookies for sale. Ungweru Community Center is a for-profit endeavor, started by the catholic church and the university, to offer technology classes to the public at very reasonable prices. Currently there are typing and basic computing classes (Microsoft Word and Windows XP) offered at Ungweru. I have been asked to help them begin teaching basic computer networking and internet skills... without using the internet of course!!

In Malawi, like many places in the world electricity services are sporadic. The strength and the amount of the electricity fluctuate frequently and without notice throughout most every day. This is a real problem for computer equipment which needs a consistent and constant supply of electricity. For this reason, every computer in Malawi, that any one depends upon to get work done, is attached to a device called a universal power supply (UPS). A UPS is a large battery that sits between the computer and the electrical grid to both regulate the power going into the computer and to provide power to the computer for long enough to save important documents when the power goes out.