Weekend in Macha

Our weekend in Macha was a great opportunity to transcribe our notes, do in-depth analysis, and prepare for our Monday presentation to the MRT team. It’s not all work and no play-we carved out time to experience some local culture and have fun!

On Saturday, we walked down to the local market (above) The cafeteria is closed over the weekends so we prepared to hone our Masterchef skills. We bought buns and beans and greens! We even managed to find garlic! We tried some local cuisine: sweet corn muffins and a bun that’s kind of a fried croissant.

Our team was really craving water that tastes like the water we have at home…we ended up buying all the water bottles in the store and we’re very excited about it!

We made an epic dinner Saturday night. Sophia was responsible for the creative vision and everyone pitched in to chop veggies and prepare sides! We made the best garlic bread Monet’s ever had and pasta with a fresh tomato and bean sauce! We also had greens and an apple crumble for dessert. With the limited ingredients we had available, we were so proud of our meal and are now considering opening an Italian-African fusion restaurant 😜

Some of us hit up local church services this weekend and experienced some of the amazing musical culture! The a cappella harmonies are just breathtaking!

Sunday evening, we had a “braai” (South African term for barbecue) with help from Lyle, an American grad student doing research at MRT, and a wonderful MRT researcher and his sweet family.

Lyle made a trip to Choma to get supplies for the night. Luckily, the taxi driver turned out to be his butcher. So, we were able to get super fresh chickens (we were relieved when Lyle didn’t walk through the door with live chickens, which was our initial interpretation of the message).

In the evenings, we practiced our dancing and acting “skills”! We played a rousing game of Heads Up and got to know each other’s Spotify playlists very well. Turns out, we have Salsa and Zumba enthusiasts in our mix!