everyday life

The days are starting to take shape and we seem to have weekly events which the girls and I look forward to. The eldest goes to nursery Mon and Wed mornings and the youngest and I go to a ladies Bible Study group on a Wed morning. Tues and Thurs mornings are spent pottering at home or running errands and I have a Chichewa lesson. Friday mornings we join some other mums at the local café for baby group. Wed afternoon there is another baby group with older children and this meets at people houses. We have got to know other families and we meet up to play with them two or three afternoons per week.

 

on safari again

Without the camera!! It is working but we forgot it this time. We went to a small park called Nyalo and saw giraffe and a zebra (well its bottom as it stalked off) and monkeys, impala and birds. The giraffes were amazing, the first one was so tall (and close) that we could only see its legs and then we saw a group running, they were so graceful, the movement is hard to describe as they move the back legs together and then the front. The park is within a large sugar plantation and we had a lovely cooling swim and lunch at the club. The sugar appeared to be grown in rotation so we saw the cane in all the various stages; the irrigation and sprinkling systems were vast and very efficient. The journey to the park was quite exciting, the road goes over a mountain and twists very steeply up and down. We had to get past lorries that were moving very slowly and a couple that had broken down, they were laden with big bundles of cotton. The views looking down onto the valley were spectacular. The pics are from Mvuu safari and taken by my bro in law.

 

time

I do have time to do things with the kids because someone else is doing a lot of the shopping and the cooking and laundry. This tee-pee was designed by my bro in law and made by my sis and I but it shows that I probably have too much time. This is all about to change as I currently have three different offers of activities with which to fill my time! The Society of Malawi have an archive which could easily occupy me for any spare time, they are also planning an oral history project to record memories of the last 50 years and I have been asked to help with the development of a small museum/display related to medical research. All this help around the house is great but we still have bad days with the kids and in some ways having people listening to me or the children hysterical is a bit embarrassing! I am really struggling with our youngest, it’s not unusual for her to scream all the way through a meal and at other times when things don’t go the way she wants or expects. I find it hard. I am also bracing myself as there is a nasty D and V bug going around, those who know me well will remember that I fall apart a bit when people are throwing up so here’s hoping we avoid that one. Although, we have been very blessed so far with good health, to have managed 2 months with only a couple of colds is good going for a family with toddlers.  

outdoors

I love the outdoor life here. We spend the whole day outdoors, running around the garden or lounging on the khondi (veranda thing). We are looking forward to some khondi furniture which will make the lounging more comfortable. Our eldest spends most of her free time helping our gardener Jonas who is very patient and used to young children. She was watering the plants with her wellies on today as it was slightly cooler (only 25 C) and her feet got muddy! When we go to other people’s houses my children usually end up in the sand pit getting grubby.

mvuu

Pronounced ummmvu not moovu, I have been the cause of much mirth among friends who have been laughing at my pronunciation. Mvuu means hippopotamus, which is Greek word for water horse. They cause the most human deaths by wild animals in Africa. They spend the day in the water because their skin is so sensitive to the sun, but only the babies can swim, the adults walk along the bottom of the river and come up for air every eight minutes. We watched them pop up for air and they make a snort as they empty the water out and unfurl their ears. At night they leave the water and graze, it is when they are moving between land and water that they are dangerous. When we stayed at Mvuu camp we heard the hippos moving about the camp and being chased back into the water by the guards. Our eldest was delighted by the slosh slosh noise the hippos make when they walk, this is the water in their tummies!

700 mkw

MKw stands for Malawi Kwacha and 700 K is about £3 depending on the rates. So what does 700 K buy you?

4 bunches of bananas

500 credits for a mobile (this lasts me a few days)

Cake and coffee at or favourite cafe (aka The Park Cafe)

5 bottles of Carlsberg Green (beer of choice in our house)

An international newspaper (weekly with change for a coffee)

3.5 litres of petrol (yes this is about the same price as the UK)

A lot of electricity

A decent chicken (for eating)

3 ½ litres of milk

36 eggs fresh from a friend’s chickens

One and half days work by one of our guards (that’s more than double the going rate)

One chitenje, the brightly decorated cloths worn by women over their clothes

 

The really frustrating thing is that the largest denomination note is 500 K and everything is paid for in cash so we have to carry enormous wads of cash. Apparently there is concern that if higher notes were introduced the kwacha would be devalued. Getting cash takes a long time. First we pay to move it from the UK into our international account, then we pay to convert the pounds into kwacha and transfer it into our kwacha account and then we draw straws to see who will go and queue for a long time in the bank to get the cash. Taking cash out involves writing a cheque, signing it three times and having it stamped many times. Fortunately the bank staff have not yet noticed that our surname is spelt wrong!

 

on

 

.... without a camera! We have just got back from an amazing couple of days at Mvuu camp with our first visitors my sister and hubbie) and before I had taken any photographs the very fancy digital camera broke!! We have a few shots taken on the video camera and when my sister returns I will pinch some of their amazing shots! The camp is very plush and all inclusive, so there is a boat trip in the morning and a drive from 3.30 until 7pm with drinks at sunset – very civilised. The first day I took our eldest on the drive and we took along a sandwich for her, the youngest stayed with Dad and had dinner at the camp. The second day we felt brave enough to take them both and they thoroughly enjoyed it. Each drive and boat trip was different from the others. We go very close to hippos, both in and out of the water, elephants, baboons, impala, kudu and lots of birds. The guides were very knowledgeable and obviously excited by what we were seeing and keen to share their enthusiasm. Once it got dark we saw different animals, well on the first evening we saw nothing but the second evening we made up for it with lots of smaller mammals. We saw elephants most trips and on our final boat ride a herd of about 30 at the river’s edge. The children enjoyed spotting the animals but maybe we saw to many because when I pointed some elephants out to our two year old she said that she had seen some already. The children were great in the jeep and the boat although it was a little hairy without any barriers or seatbelts particularly when we drove off the edge of an embankment into a stream.

 PS there are no pictures because we can’t find the cable for the video camera!!

 

This is the version with pics from my brother in law!