1/12 We have decided that someone important must have moved onto our road somewhere because what was already a rather nice tarred, 2 lane road well able to handle the flow of traffic has been transformed into the nicest dirt road I have ever seen!! First, huge piles of dirt appeard every 20 feet or so and then they have spent over a week spreading and packing this dirt (and apparently pulling up the tar underneath) I suspect they will start tarring anyday which could get rather interesting since we only have one way off our compound and it is straight onto this road! We could not have left if we wanted to on Saturday afternoon and I suspect it will be unpassable again at some point in the near future. When we arrived a year and a half ago it was totally "bush" across the street with no development but in that time a school and several houses have been built and we can tell it is going to be developed more and more so it is reasonable to work on the road. THen this morning a friend said she heard this road was being widened to make it sort of a bypass around Lilongwe!! Aghh! since this would ahve a huge impact on the traffic I can only hope it is a false rumor... and praise the Lord we only rent this house and will be long gone before they actually finish such a bypass! (this road deadends about 2-3 miles from our house. to actually connect it as a bypass to the cities in the south they will have to build several miles of totally new road)
12/17 -I didn't post this the other day because I wanted to load a picture and the internet was too slow. Today I am getting an odd error message so I will just post minus the picture. The development on the road in the past week? Well, they spent 4 days grading and packign and smoothing till it was the best dirt road I have ever seen and then they dug it all up and started over because there was "a failure" somewhere. I think that means they made a mistake. One of Thomas's responsibilities for the week is to keep an eye on the progress and to let me know before they start tarring in front of our house so I can get the car off the compound instead of getting totally blocked on!
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
Snake Encounter!
Yesterday karis and i went swimming at our friends Beth and Jeremy's house. Beth is currently in the UK and Jeremy was at work but their two lovely daughters Claire (8) and Brianna (7) were home as well as a friend who is staying with the family, Kate. So we had a nice swim and then Karis and I went to the bathroom to change. I walked in, put Karis down, dropped my bag and closed the door all sort in one movement and then looked up to see a large green snake in the shower about 6-8 feet in front of us! It was a littler surreal, I grabbed Karis but she of course was already walking away from me - toward the snake (though I don't think she really saw it but was just stepping away after I put her down) so I had to grab for her twice then had to turn my back to open the door which of course stuck the first time!! Thankfully, the snake was more occupied with getting out of the shower by attempting to climb up the wall that I don't think it hardly saw us.
I get out of the bathroom, slam the door and yell for the girls to call the gardener! Thankfully, all people and all 4 dogs were in the kitchen area and out of the way. So Brianna runs to do that and Claire, who is fearless, is crouching by the door to see if she can see it (I wouldn't let her open it) The gardener dutifully comes in with a stick and a machete. We show him the bathroom door and then close the hall door and stand and wait! We closed the hall door so that if the snake got out of the bathroom it didn't come straight into the room with the kids and the dogs but I still felt a little guilty and I stood in safety and sent him off to kill the snake! We waited about 2 minutes while we hear whacking from the bathroom and then he comes out pushing a still writhing snake along the floor, leaving blood spots. ughh.
The girls and the gardener said it was a Green Mamba (very poisonous and aggressive) but I think that is a pretty standard answer for all green snakes so I am not sure. However, we couldn't find the snake book so we put it in a bucket and put it up high where the dogs couldn't reach it to await Jeremy's assessment.
Oh, I just got a text from him and he said it was 100% a green mamba and that it was about 1.5 meters.(this is why little girls have fathers - there was no way I was going to measure the thing and Claire was the one who put it in the bucket!)
On the one hand I making this a pretty dramatic story but on the other hand, this situation had potential to be really dangerous - My theory is that the snake got in throught the open bathroom window above the shower and it just wanted back out when it couldn't get back up the wall there is no telling where it would have gone! Claire and Brianna of course run all over their house and karis tends to run around too and any one of them could have encountered it and had it even been curled up in the shower versus trying to get out then someone could have stepped on it. Had one us gotten bitten it would have been a really, really big deal so I just praise God that it worked out the way it did! AND that the gardener was there! Kate and I discussed that had he not been there we really would have had to have been responsible adults and killed it ourselves!! And had that happend we would have done fine BUT praise God for the gardener!
I get out of the bathroom, slam the door and yell for the girls to call the gardener! Thankfully, all people and all 4 dogs were in the kitchen area and out of the way. So Brianna runs to do that and Claire, who is fearless, is crouching by the door to see if she can see it (I wouldn't let her open it) The gardener dutifully comes in with a stick and a machete. We show him the bathroom door and then close the hall door and stand and wait! We closed the hall door so that if the snake got out of the bathroom it didn't come straight into the room with the kids and the dogs but I still felt a little guilty and I stood in safety and sent him off to kill the snake! We waited about 2 minutes while we hear whacking from the bathroom and then he comes out pushing a still writhing snake along the floor, leaving blood spots. ughh.
The girls and the gardener said it was a Green Mamba (very poisonous and aggressive) but I think that is a pretty standard answer for all green snakes so I am not sure. However, we couldn't find the snake book so we put it in a bucket and put it up high where the dogs couldn't reach it to await Jeremy's assessment.
Oh, I just got a text from him and he said it was 100% a green mamba and that it was about 1.5 meters.(this is why little girls have fathers - there was no way I was going to measure the thing and Claire was the one who put it in the bucket!)
On the one hand I making this a pretty dramatic story but on the other hand, this situation had potential to be really dangerous - My theory is that the snake got in throught the open bathroom window above the shower and it just wanted back out when it couldn't get back up the wall there is no telling where it would have gone! Claire and Brianna of course run all over their house and karis tends to run around too and any one of them could have encountered it and had it even been curled up in the shower versus trying to get out then someone could have stepped on it. Had one us gotten bitten it would have been a really, really big deal so I just praise God that it worked out the way it did! AND that the gardener was there! Kate and I discussed that had he not been there we really would have had to have been responsible adults and killed it ourselves!! And had that happend we would have done fine BUT praise God for the gardener!
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Lilongwe Used Clothes Market
The used clothes business is quite the happening affair in Lilongwe. Clothes that originated from Goodwill, charities etc etc in the U.S. and Europe arrive in bales that are about 5ft by 5 ft and are bought by individuals. They then take it to their stall (a covered space with plastic on the floor) in the market and open up the bales. The shopper then sorts through the piles until they make a find. Other clothes are also washed, ironed and hung up for better presentation. There does seem to be some sort of method to the madness on how the bales are put together. IE some will be all men's shirts or kids clothes or whatever. Just like consignment shopping in the States you never know what you are going to get: some stuff is junk and other times you will find a name brand with the tag still on it! The whole city from expats to villagers shop here and the prices range from about 100 kwacha for a simple kids shirt to several hundred for a jacket. Sometimes it is depressing to look at an item that has a garage sale tag for 75cents and you are paying $2 for it. However, clearly most items are worth more than they are sold for at garage sales.
We have been shopping here the last 2 years for Christmas gifts for our staff and their families. This year they have a total of 12 kids so we needed quite a lot and it was hot! So hot that while I usually really enjoy these sorts of things i was desperate to leave before we were halfway through our list! We finally gave up before we got everything so I will have to make one more trip - on a cooler day! Once we got everything home and washed it all looks quite nice except for one pair of pants that is too worn in the knees. What actually prompted me to write about this is that last night as I was hanging up a very cute dress that is about 2 sizes too big for Karis I realized that it is in perfect condition AND reversible. Very cool. So I think we will be keeping that one for her and I will buy another one to give as a gift...
The downside to all of this is that apparently this type of thing has actually been really detrimental to the local textile industries in several African countries. Local textiles just cannot produce clothes as cheap as these can be sold... Yet another thing that seems like really good thing initially but once you learn more about the economics not so helpful after all...
We have been shopping here the last 2 years for Christmas gifts for our staff and their families. This year they have a total of 12 kids so we needed quite a lot and it was hot! So hot that while I usually really enjoy these sorts of things i was desperate to leave before we were halfway through our list! We finally gave up before we got everything so I will have to make one more trip - on a cooler day! Once we got everything home and washed it all looks quite nice except for one pair of pants that is too worn in the knees. What actually prompted me to write about this is that last night as I was hanging up a very cute dress that is about 2 sizes too big for Karis I realized that it is in perfect condition AND reversible. Very cool. So I think we will be keeping that one for her and I will buy another one to give as a gift...
The downside to all of this is that apparently this type of thing has actually been really detrimental to the local textile industries in several African countries. Local textiles just cannot produce clothes as cheap as these can be sold... Yet another thing that seems like really good thing initially but once you learn more about the economics not so helpful after all...
Monday, November 26, 2007
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!!
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!!
Friday, November 23, 2007
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!
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!
Thursday, November 15, 2007
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)
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)
Saturday, November 3, 2007
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!
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
