As far as tourists are concerned, it is our quietest time here at Butterfly.  Heavy rains deter the tourists but provide us with a lot of extra work generally around the lodge.  Drains have to be re-built, and roofs recovered as we can often receive a few inches in half an hour.  It does however result in a lush garden site, which would be harvesting a lot more vegetables right now if it wasn't for the rabbits that have become Butterfly's new `friends'.  Amazing lightening stormscoming from the lake give us a great show, but also wreak havoc on our electrics.
Whereas we normally have a few long -termers around to cover the quiet season, a few people left us en mass in December and we have yet to entice others to get involved!!  So if you know anyone who is interested then get them to get in touch.  On that front we recently got an agreement from the Regional Immigration Officer in Mzuzu outlining that people were able to volunteer on the relevant tourist visa, for a period of up to nine months.  This is great news as so far we have been doing everything `quietly quietly'.  We are still working together with the District Commissioner to get an agreement for more skilled, longer-term volunteers, but this seems to be taking a little longer to organise.

 
 
And there are no shortages of projects for volunteers to get involved in.  The playgrounds go from strength to strength and Al was busy again in January constructing another one up at the hospital.  It was suggested as a good idea by a local nurse who pointed out that the children spend many hours up there, either on their own or with parents, caring for people or relatives in the hospital.  What a great distraction and, with money raised by Gill Hargreaves, Al got together with a group of volunteers and had it up and running in less than a week.
The kids and people in general are so into them, Al reckoned it was the most fulfilling job ever, and there are no shortagesof new opportunities.  Nick, from Wakwenda retreat Chizimulu island, has expressed an interest in funding one for the kids over there and at this rate we will be building them around the whole of northern Malawi.!! Great!
January also saw the opening of Gulugufe ( Butterfly ) Nursery, after a mammoth painting session over the Xmas from AJ and her band of helpers.  For days they were up there painting alphabets and numbers and amazing pictures.  Believe me trying to find objects in Chi Tonga which start with all the letters of the alphabet is hard enough, never mind painting them.  All was accomplished though and the school opened for enrolment on the 19th January.  We would like thank Wareham Rotary Club and Rowan Temple for all their hard work fundraising and donating money to make it all possible and of course Gill Hargreaves for her constant support and ideas as she came out to visit again and donated money.  Gill Leaper was over for a short time and helped out for two weeks with the new teachers, children and all the equipment.  Not only is it a massive challenge to train teachers not to spend hours chanting at the children, but also to introduce the learning materials which none of them had come into contact with before.  Despite this the two weeks have been a success, it would seem, as every time AJ visits the teachers are interacting with the children in small groups doing different activities. 
Unfortunately there was a break-in and some precious toys taken, but the place has been properly secured now and some of the other toys were retreived.  There is always need for new things and ideas if you have any old toys to donate then please contact us on ways to get them out here.  Also we are desperately searching for a volunteer to carry on Gill's great work with the children, so please get in touch if you can offer your services.
Another side to the opening of the nursery school is that AJ has noticed just how mal-nourished the kids are.  It would be great to provide a regular nutritional snack there for all the kids attending and this is something we will organise.  A small kitchen area would be beneficial and also a compost toilet is something we will look into in the future.
The last few weeks have also seen the arrival of some students from the Natural Resource College in Lilongwe to help with the agricultural project in the surrounding villages.  Six students arrived in total of which three went north on a small boat to Ruwarwe.  Ruwarwe is 60kms north by boat, with no raod access or electricity.  To see the city kids worrying if they would get mobile coverage there was quite comical and shows you that things are not all that completely different.  By all accounts they are doing a good job up there, and we will find out more when they return next week.  The students that remained did some workshops on compost-making, tree grafting, and erosion control and we planted 60 trees including some fruit trees.  We have also collected over two hundred more trees.  Working with the Committee of the information centre we have identified at least six families who want to plant a mixture of fruit and agro-forestry trees so we hope to be there in the next couple of weeks to get them in the ground.
The infomation room is also progressing, although there have been set-backs regarding staff of late.  After losing Oswald we employed two more staff that we hoped would free up more time for community work and infomation gathering through the centre.  Unfortunately one of these, Synolia, has left already and we have been forced to advertise again.  This has limited the amount of extra work, but we have visited a few Village Development Committees in the area to inform them of the resources available and see how we can best be of assisstance.  Positively there have been two local lads who have shown an interest in recent weeks that they want to volunteer for the centre.  One has a certificate in HIV counselling and is keen to work in the community, and the other is studying for a degree at nearby Mzuzu University and is keen to put his spare time to use.  He is particulary interested in doing work linked to gender issues.
One thing people always mention when we are out in th community is finding access to markets so when Craig contacted us from the UK saying Innocent Smoothies would be pleased to receive some local moangos for testing, AJ quickly packaged them up and sent them off.  This was done via DHL and not the local snail mail, which would have meant, at best, the mangos arrived as some kind of mango pickle or soup!! Uurgh!
The timetables for students lessons are written up and we are to start working with both school leavers and Youth organisation to teach people basic computer skills.  The centre will be closed on Sunday to accommodate this.
Christmas was a time that was busy here at Butterfly, and we had a really nice bunch of people stay with us for a few weeks.  On the big day we encouraged everybody to get involved and wanted everybody to cook their own favourite meal, drink or dessert.  We provided as many ingredients as possible and a bar-b-que on the beach.  Peiple really got into it and we were cooing and drinking all day.  We ate a massive feast by which time everybody was more than ready to converge on the bar.  People enjoyed it so much that they insisted on doing the same on new year's eve- only with the slight variation of celebrating new year around the World....starting with New Zealand at midday, Kabul at 10.30pm, England at 2 am and many others.  I dont think anyone got to welcome in new year for Alaska, which didn't happen until midday the next day...
So we were the busiest i have ever seen it around Xmas and luckily we had one more room to rent out.  AJ had been on a mission the previous month, as part of a bet with Al.  He had said that there was no way she could turn the storeroom into an en-suite room before Xmas.  But her and Francis got really busy, water plumbed in, electricity, bed made and totally decorated which meant that not only did Al owe them both drinks by the festive season, but that we had an extra room to rent out.
As for other changes around the site, the compost toilet is nearly there, ans is starting to look the part.  Another couple of weeks will see that finished so that we can move on to the shower.  These need to be finished before we can think of renovating the other side of the infomation room.  Not sure when we will get to do this, because although it seems quiet now, it will not be long until the madness of summer.  We have another World Challenge group coming in the summer and an increasing number of vounteers who are contacting us through our web-site.  Hopefully we will continue to build links and grow like this and more and more people will come back and help us continue making a positive contribution to the community here in Nkhata Bay!