Sunday – In Lilongwe

It is late summer here and the tail end of the rainy season. I’m told it will rain almost every evening. It sure did last night. Thunderstorms and the whole works. The temperature cooled right off, too.

Flowers are in bloom everywhere. Lots of familiar ones: roses, geraniums, vinca, cana, mint (and other herbs), and some tropical stuff that I recognize but can’t name.

It doesn’t feel like I’ve accomplished much today, but I think I’ve got everything ready for tomorrow and I got my long walk in. I’ll have to do some additional photocopying, but that’s no big deal (I think). My first meeting is at 8:00 tomorrow, then two briefings through the morning and the afternoon spent installing and testing TraiNet with some of the Mission staff in the training room. Since they start the day at 8:00, I assume they go until 5:00, but I will likely have to hang out a bit longer to overlap with the folks in DC.

On my walk I went around the section of Lilongwe called the City Centre. Well, what I saw isn’t very urban, to tell the truth. It is more like some moderate-sized clusters of buildings arranged around largish cul-de-sacs, with the clusters connected by decent roads. Being Sunday, nothing was open. I’ll have to try to get down to the Old City at some point and see what’s down there. This really isn’t what I expected at all. That’s not all bad, of course.

There was a rain today, at about noon, that lasted for a couple hours. It’s now about 5:00 and another storm is coming. I can hear the thunder starting. I’m also wondering if we’re at the extreme eastern part of the time zone. By 5:30 the sun will be down.

I made it into the hotel’s business center and fired off a couple emails earlier this afternoon. For about 20 minutes it cost about $5.00. There is supposed to be another internet café about a klick from here but according to my guidebook it is (of course) closed on Sundays. I’m hoping that the Mission will let me plug in the laptop and sync things up while I’m there.