Johnathan Mabaso and Crew

Ok so Johnathan is my counterpart, but he is so funny and with me alot that I figured I would Give him and his family a Bio.

Johnathan is short, with a beard and otherwise cropped short hair. It is due to his religion, called the apostoles, of which only about 5 families in my village are. He described it as a mix of chrisitan and muslim. He also always wears long pants and sleeve, mostly made of linen I think His shirts are normally collared.

He is always laughing, and ready and willing to do work. He is a go-getter and alot of vollies are jealous that I get to work with him.

His nickname is Mandevu, which means beard. People that dont know his name simply know him as the one with the beard, normally riding around Chitipa on his bike. He is always moving, he will bike from the boma to a village past chisenga, then to our village and a village by Kapoka all in a day. Isuppose you can not appreciate this without a map. And his bikes are terribly crappy.

He is a tin smith by trade, when his equipment is working he is a photographer, he built nursery schools and oversaw them until jealousy took him out. He also has two wives that run a bakery at his house.

Pause. Yes, he has two wives.

His first wife (I can never remeber her name. she is Elder wife) has low blood pressure so she was passing out from all the work of being a Malawian wife. She is the mother of Lostina, Abby and Raquel. So wife number two is younger, 21, and from Zambia. Im not sure if it is her son or not but she has a little boy names ken and a baby named Salome. The younger wife acts, well, young, she whines a bit and is stubborn. She also brings me water and does laundry occasionally. But somehow Elder wife and Agogo bring me water too.

The children (age wise) are L, A, K, R, and S. I am only not sure if Ken is J's. (Like the abbreviations?)

Abby is one of my favorites, she is very precocious and not afraid of anything really. I have been getting J to feed her more fruit because she had the vitamin deficiency fungal sores on her head.

They all live together, with J's mom, Agogo (grandmother). They literally live several hundred feet away. So very close. They are as close to family as I have here in Malawi