Lots of busy work over the last couple of weeks in preparation for last weekends’ Run for Wildlife. In past years, this event has taken place at a local school track, where sponsored runners ran to see how many laps they could complete in one hour. This year, in addition to the school race, Lilongwe hosted the first ever road race to happen in Malawi – a 12 kilometer foot race through the center of the city. In all, 700 runners competed for a grand prize of 120,000 kwacha – or about the equivalent of $825.00 (which is a lot of money here!). The run was a benefit for the Wildlife Centre, and about $11,000 was raised to begin construction on our very much needed veterinary clinic.
At the finish line, I unexpectedly ended up having to play human doctor to a number of collapsed, delirious, passed out, vomiting, heat-exhausted competitors. Unsurprisingly, the ambulance that had been hired to be at the race was nowhere to be found, and the medics that were around just stood there looking blankly at these patients as if they had no idea what to do. I ended up having to soak one of my extra shirts with water and tried to cool these guys down until the ambulance finally did arrive for them. Poor guys, I hope that they did okay. Amazingly also, a lot of runners ran this race barefoot, so there was also lots of bleeding, blistered feet at the end of the race. Pretty intense.
Today, finally, I have a much needed day off for myself – the first official day off since I have been here! It has been a nice quiet day around the house. Spent some time just sitting in the garden relaxing, reading and napping. One of my housemates is going out of town for the next 3 weeks, and the other will be moving out in 2 weeks, so it will be really nice to have the house completely to myself for a little while!
I am now ‘mom’ to an orphaned pair of baby squirrels. I am usually good about not getting too attached, but this little comedy duo has become quite dear to me. They will be old enough to be released in a couple of weeks – I am going to be very sad to see them go!
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