Beginning in early January Gina had to prepare to travel to Malawi so that she could collect the soil she needs to further her PhD. This, of course, is an involved process. Vaccinations, malaria medication, equipment, travel arrangement etc. etc. all had to be finalized so that her trip would be safe and productive. Surprisingly enough the most difficult part of this preparation involved finding coolers. It turns out there isn't a single camp cooler anywhere in the entire country of Switzerland. By cooler I mean the Coleman 45$ walmart special, nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't exist here. The closest comparable items are small, solar powered gadgets that inform you of the temperature inside the space you want to keep cool and that warn you if your preselected ideal temperature is compromised. These products do of course cost an obscene amount of money and can only fit a six pack- maybe. In the end we had to special order four coolers to keep Gina's soil in tip top shape from the Germans, who have realized the wonderful, simple utility of the classic cooler.
After all the preparations were complete I drove Gina and her professor to the airport, we said our goodbyes, and we parted ways. As I left the airport with a screaming infant strapped down in the backseat I pondered how the next 10 days would go. I guessed they might be difficult. I was right. Tending to a child, at least from my experience so far, isn't that complicated. A baby eats, it sleeps, it craps its pants. These needs are easily taken care of and met. The challenge is to meet these objectives while doing everything else involved with living and working. Going to the grocery store for example becomes enormously challenging. Cooking, eating, cleaning, sleeping, relaxing- they all become activities that can only be done when the little one allows. It's exhausting. What I am saying is having Gina away in Africa kind of sucked. But she is back now, she brought back half the dirt in Malawi, and it appears that she avoided contracting any of the exotic tropical diseases that flourish in sub Saharan Africa. Success.
Of course, after Gina got back from Africa she had to go to a four day winter school somewhere up on the German border so Sofia and I repeated our dance for another four days. Ironically enough it was this second trip to a location an hour away where Gina contracted and delivered an illness. So a day after her second arrival she and I both spent two days making frequent trips to the bathroom to purge ourselves of whatever we had tried to consume minutes before. And then Sofia got chicken pox. You always hear about the chicken pox so I always assumed it could be severe- and maybe it can be- but Sofia basically got a few pimples on her face and chest for a few days and that was it. No fever, no chills, no symptoms of any kind except for the marks, which are already starting to clear up. I suppose we were lucky in that regard. To make sure it was what we thought it was we went to the doctor who, after initially assessing Sofia and then telling us she had small pox quickly realized the linguistic mistake and corrected the misunderstanding.
All in all it's been quite a 2014 so far. Thankfully Gina won't have to travel again for some time. Thankfully.
More pictures:
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| Gina's bed in Malawi |
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| One of Gina's field sites |
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| maize everywhere you look |
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| carrot mash is yummy.. sort of |
