home cooking

I had forgotten just how much convenience food we eat in the UK. I would claim to be someone who cooks quite a lot and do cook from scratch but here in Malawi it really is cooking from scratch and the unreliability of power means that we don’t keep much in the freezer. There’s also a lack of snacky things, the biscuits are either grim or expensive and there’s no bought cake. Getting over nasty virus I crave nice food that requires little preparation and our cupboards have nothing suitable. It’s tomato soup and nice yogurts and tasty things to tempt me to eat that I am missing. Oh and I forgot to bring back any jelly babies, we do have chocolate but it’s not that sort of illness!

back home

Our flight home was ok, this was the first time we had flown back to Malawi via Johannesburg which is an 11 hour night flight and definitely better than lots of shorter flights when we have flown the cheaper route (via Nairobi or Addis). We managed to spread the sleeping children over 3 seats and I found a spare seat so we all got a bit of sleep. The stop at Jo’burg airport was nice and there were quite a few friends also returning to Blantyre all enjoying a last latte or cappuccino!

 

The contrasts between here and home are much more noticeable when you first arrive back. We were amused by the “customer service” at Jo’burg airport when the lady checking our passports carried on a conversation with her friend the whole time she was serving us! The chaos of Blantyre airport felt worse than usual, there weren’t enough trollies and most of us had more luggage than we could carry and the space is not big enough and it’s a hot building. Once you get your trolley loaded you have to steer it around the guys who are all wanting to help and who pretend not to understand “no”.

 

The first few days back are always spent organising things, there’s often things that can’t be done until others have been completed. So the car battery was flat but we couldn’t charge it until we had more electricity, we couldn’t get more electric until we got cash organised and then there was a delay as the electric co. had problems with their computers!

home James

After more than 8 weeks away it’s time to head home. I miss normal life, with some time when kids are at school/nursery and time to do exercise and time alone. It’s been lovely to see friends and family and I’d much prefer to stay here and settle down but as we’re homeless I am ready to head back for the last leg of our adventure.

a good guest

We are coming to the end of our UK trip and will be returning ‘home’ soon. We’ve had a great time and it’s so lovely to see lots of family and friends. We have stayed in over 12 different places so far and have another two to go. We’ve tried to be good guests, not creating too much havoc and doing some of the shopping, cooking and washing up and remembering how it is from the other side – we’ve had lots of visitors in our house in Malawi and try to do the things we appreciated.

 

We have hired 5 different cars, in ever decreasing size as we reduce the amount of luggage we are lugging around the country and try to stick to our budget!