Happy Father's Day

This is Dave's Father's Day Present.

Forgive the mess, we are packing and all our art is all stacked and ready to go.  

We saw this piece during Environment Week. Dave was strangely drawn to it, I was unconvinced. I thought it was a little creepy.  The second day we went back to look at it and there was a performance being presented by a local drama group.  It was presented all in Chichewa, so we enjoyed the action but had a little trouble following the plot.  After it was over a gentleman translated it for those of us who "haven't had enough time to practice our Chichewa."

The gist of the play was that a man fell sick and went to his local traditional healer*, we might  call him a witch doctor, to get medicine.  The healer did his best, but the trees that the medicine come from had all been cut down to be made into charcoal.  There was no medicine.  In the end the man died.

There goes the medicine. 

Right about then I knew that picture was coming home with us.

The title of the painting?  "Plant 10 Trees For Medicine."

*There are only about 2 doctors for about every 100,000 people here in Malawi.  For most people traditional healers are the only medical practitioners they will ever see.