Frustrations!!!

I was going to write an separate post for each of these topics but they all fit under the same category (Malawi) anyway and this is more than adequate whining!

1) I just spent an hour trying to figure out the stupid water bill!! Granted, it should not have taken me that long but in the end, I have deduced that they have made a 8500 kwacha ($60)mistake! It took so long to figure it out because the bills are very confusing and if I do not have it all laid out very clearly I will never be able to explain it when I go into the office! The huge complicating factor is that they send out overlapping bills! What I mean is: I receive a bill that is due on say, September 31 so I go in and pay it on Sept 25 but by then the bill that is due on Oct 31 has already been sent out and includes the September balance!! (I tend to pay bills fairly close to the due date and never remember having this issue in the States but maybe it is because the bills were so much easier to read and the odds of the company making a mistake so much lower). So the only way to actually have your bills and your receipts match up is to pay the bill pretty much as soon as you get it - that's reasonable!! EXCEPT - the bills are not actually sent on a specific, consistent day of the month so you don't know when to expect them AND they go to John's office... the only thing I can say about the girl responsible for sorting the mail is, "bless her heart"... In short, actually receiving the bill in a timely manner is difficult. However, I do feel a small sense of accomplishment at figuring it out and tomorrow morning will traipse down to the main water board office to (attempt) to remedy the situation



2) Compound staff - I will attempt to keep this short as to go into too many details would be excruciatingly painful. We and especially John have spent literally HOURS in the last week trying to get everyone to get along. It seems that while we were in the US in October some sort of conflict arose between the guards and the gardener. However, no one told us this, we have just gradually been discovering it. It all started because we left cell phone minutes for them to use to call one of our friends if there were problems while we were gone. They only called her once yet all 5 cards of units were gone... An issue since they knew those units were for a specific purpose. When we addressed the one guard and one gardener who have phones all the issues began to leak out. Then to compound the whole thing we also had a misunderstanding over some ufa (flour) and we have been inundated with requests for money that has left us a little short when dealing with all these guys. Add to that language barriers and a VERY indirect culture where backbiting and gossip seems to be fairly common yet no one will actually rat out the other person. I could go on forever on with the he said, she said but... In the meantime, the gardener seems to have recovered from his week of pouting and we will have a compound meeting tomorrow to discuss the issues with everyone at once!

3) Karis's bed - Karis has learned to climb out of a crib so was ready for a "big girl bed". We anticipated this and brought a bed rail back from the States with us. So we asked Baylor if we could have one of the single beds that are in storage. They said no problem but would have to find mattresses (a little odd that there were no mattresses since they had them before but...) and arrange transport. No problem. Other component to the story is that we actually had a single bed when we first arrived and had to take the head board off of it to move it into our guestroom. Since we were just using it as a daybed we left the headboard off of it. Later it was borrowed by another doctor and then eventually went back to storage as we didn't need it. But we still have the headboard... I think we attempted to tell the office to bring us the bed without the headboard...
So, about 2 weeks after the request we have a bed delivered. It had a headboard so was a different bed but that was fine. However, we soon realized we could not get this down the hall with the headboard and the headboard was designed differently and won't come off!! So the next day I see the driver and ask him to please bring us the bed with the missing headboard. he said okay and seemed to know exactly what i was talking about. That same day John went into the shed to look and there was no bed without a headboard or any other single beds for that matter! So that night we spent an hour taking the doors off 2 different doors to get the bed into her room. Not a huge deal and it worked out fine. THEN the next day John was doing something totally unrelated (looking for a screwdriver for his computer) and went into a different shed and found multiple single beds, including the one without the headboard! This is particularly frustrating because the office has inventoried things on multiple occasions yet never seem to know where anything is!

However, we do enjoy living here! But we are seriously considering moving into a flat next year for a variety of reasons, eliminating our need for guards and a gardener not the least of which!!

Butternut and Mangoes

For this 24 hour period my favorite food is Butternut squash!! I love the stuff. I used it in place of sweet potatoes in my thanksgiving sweet potato casserole yesterday and I must say it turned out great and then someone else brought cubed, roasted butternut and someone else mashed it! I do specify it is a short lived love affair because i don't always enjoy it quite this much. (Yesterday, when I was boiling it prior to mashing I had some extra and just ate it plain with pepper!) but it is definitely a food we have "discovered" since moving to Malawi. I used to buy them in the States but then wouldn't end up using them. I started getting them here for Karis and then starting finding recipes for them and other people started talking about it. One of the restaurants has an amazing feta and butternut pizza and I now make a feta and butternut quiche! Now, don't assume this is actually an indigenous food to Malawi. As far as I can see, it certainly isn't. If fact they are usually on the expensive side - although not this week so who knows! The funny thing about trying to recreate American Thanksgiving in the southern hemisphere is that it is summer so fall/winter crops like pumpkin are no where to be found and it really isn't sweet potato season (hence the butternut casserole in the first place!)

Another funny food comment: mangoes! It mango season and we love it but John and I definitely have different taste in mangoes! He went to Salima, the home of Malawi's best mangoes, for work on Monday and brought us back a bag. Mathilda cut them up for us and they are great just a bit on the ripe side for me. Then last night someone brought a bowl full of mango that are much more on the green side! I love them and John said he didn't even try them because he could tell they weren't ripe enough!

Wildlife and other happenings

Clearly frequent updates is something I need to keep working on!
Yesterday was an interesting animal day for us! I was sitting at the desk sort of absent mindedly staring out the window when i noticed an animal that looked like squirrel but then it hit me that we very rarely see squirrels here and this is actually something different - maybe like a mongoose or an African squirrel or who knows! I grabbed the camera to take a picture but of course it had disappeared before I got outside but when i was looking around for it I heard a rustling pretty close to my feet and looked over at a huge lizard! I have pictures but they are still on the camera so will have to be sent later.

Meanwhile at work John had a patient bring him two live pigeons as an appreciation gift! Although he did really appreciate the gracious gesture it was still a little odd to handle 2 birds in his exam room! I guess they set them on the exam table first but they pooped everywhere and fell off!So Then they put them in a bag. John said this man's immune system is in pretty bad shape and he definately did not need to be handling birds!!! Thankfully, John was also able to pass them on to another family who needed food later in the day!
In other events: Karis's nightime routine has improved remarkably now that we have been home a few weeks. As she can climb out of any crib she is sleeping on a mattress on the floor till we get her a bed (should come tomorrow) and is also learning more words daily and increasing her song repertoire. She now sings the first few lines of Twinkle, twinkle little star, the ABCs and the eieio of Old Macdonald.
We have also discovered Instant Messenger on Yahoo. This has both increased our ability to communicate and sucked away hours of our life (and well worth it)

Home Safely

Well, we are safely back home in Malawi and getting back into the swing of things! We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the States and had a great time with family and friends but are also glad to be back! Our trip back was pretty much uneventful and smooth. We had much better service on the flight and had an extra seat so Karis had some space to sit! We were also very pleased to discover that Delta had just changed their planes and we had individual t.v. screens!! Huge blessing! Of course, karis was not interested in any of the shows so wore out the battery on my laptop and her portable DVD player but that is what we brought it for! John and I watched several hours of tv each and it was great! Johannesburg airort is notorious for things being stolen out of your luggage and unfortunately we were victims this time! Our five bags that were in the baggage compartment all night were fine but when we checked in for our flight in the morning they made us check John's carry on that had all the electronics in it (specifically so they would not be accessible to anyone as that is the type of thing that is usually stolen). We anticipated this happening but thought they would take it at the gate but instead they took it at check in! In retrospect we should have rearranged things at that point but we just didn't think through it all as it was happening! We are thankful because it could have been much worse and of all the electronics in that bag it was the one we use the least but it is still maddening!! We also knew we were back in Malawi when we arrived with no one to pick us up! Our friend, Beth, had planned to do it but had something come up so made arrangments with John's office to send a driver but somehow it didn't happen! It was minor as we called and they sent someone immediately but was still a good reminder that things don't function on the same schedule here!
On the plus side, there were no problems on the compound while we were gone and the rains have started early so things are already green! We really are glad to be back!