I was thinking of my friend Roderik the other day. He lives in Zomba Malawi and I was privileged to meet and get to know him when I was doing a project in Malawi last year. He's a really ingenious guy who has an amazing outlook on life. He's HIV positive and has a whole array of income streams that give him, by local standards, a pretty good life. His main thing is that he runs a solar powered cell phone charging station. There is no electricity in the region, so all the people from the surrounding villages who have cell phones come by in the early morning and drop them off to Roderik and then return at the end of the work day to pick up their charged phones so they can talk at night. He also tends to crops, repairs bicycles, operates a local well and councils the village men on the challenges of living with HIV. He also cycles 30K to the district hospital 4 days a week (on a 3 speed mtn bike!) where he volunteers in the HIV clinic. He is one of the most calm and humble people you could ever meet. His family treated me like their own.
We spent one night experiencing the most epic lightening storm ever imaginable to where he was certain his clay house would collapse during the night. The next day I lent him my ipod and he listened to Bob Marley for 6 hours non-stop.
