7 quick takes.....

You can guess who lives here ;-)

1. Good morning! It’s Monday, but it doesn’t feel like it because today is a little different from most Mondays. It feels different because Hartmut is home from work. Not because it’s a national holiday that we didn’t know about (that happens quite often when you move to a new country) or because he is sick (I am thankful he isn’t) but because the whole country is on a standstill, waiting for the verdict of the court. Last week I already wrote about it; the court would finally give their verdict in the case against the president and the validity of the last elections. Today, at 9 in the morning, the court will finally deliver and because of it, the country is waiting anxiously. We are waiting too, everybody is convinced that there will be protests, but where they will take place and how they will affect the country depends on what the court will say….
2. On Friday Sophie was joking that somebody had eaten a few days of the week and it really felt like that; the week was over before it had properly started it. I don’t even really know what happened and because I don’t have an agenda where I write down what we do I have to check the pictures that I took. It’s not that the days itself feel fast, mostly quite the contrary. But in a good way, we don’t feel stressed, it just feels like the girls are floating in an endless ocean of time where we every now and then encounter islands of learning with books, recipes, art and music and it’s just the way we like it.
3. Actually, if there would be one word to summarise the week it would be ‘ducklings’! Our mamma duck sat on her eggs for weeks and we watched them closely. Then suddenly, one morning, 4 little ducklings popped out their heads of the house and we were over the moon. Since that, every activity has been interrupted by irresistible urges to run to the duck house to look at them and, if mamma duck allows, pick them up to get some duck-cuddles. Little ducklings are definitely amongst the cutest things in this world, these little balls of yellow and brown fluff will melt the hardest of hearts. Watching them become independent in super-speed, now happily waddling behind their mom in the garden is fascinating and we count ourselves very lucky that we get to experience this.
4. Another key-word this week was ‘sick’. But, contrary to the duck-part of the summary, we won’t want this part to stay. Sick girls mean short fuses, lots of tears, interrupted nights and days that are hard to predict. Fortunately most of it seems to be gone and we are all a little happier and more patient.  Great, because we need to get on well this week as it will just be the girls and me from Thursday onwards.  
5. Thursday Hartmut will go to Namibia to attend the memorial service of his grandmother. I realised that I did not write about this in the last blog but she passed away last week Friday. It wasn’t completely unexpected, but still sad and we will really miss her. She was almost 95 and lived a full life. When I got to know her more than ten years ago she was still fit, living independently and even though I wasn’t a ‘real’ grandchild, she treated me like one and became a real grandmother to me. Her sister, whom she took care of for a long time since she had dementia, passed away last year and it was as if, after that, she lost all her sense of purpose here on earth. Her faith in God was strong and we know that, although her life may have ended here, it hasn’t really ended but rather that all the hardships and pain have been taken away and that she is in a better place now.
6. Last week I wrote that I was making an itinerary for my sister, today I am working on one for my parents. They have booked their tickets to come in July and we are just so excited to be able to show ‘our’ country to them. We have, as usual, tons of plans. Now it’s just about seeing how realistic those are in the time frame that we have. And just as I wrote last week it doesn’t really matter what we will see and do, what really counts is that we will be together.
7. Ok I better get going. We need to eat breakfast (the girls have made their own toast already) and we have a meeting with the village headman about something we want to make in the village. I don’t know who it is but we have made an appointment in the Malawi way, by letting someone else go to him first to introduce us and ask if we can come. It was fine (it always is) so hopefully the rest will be fine too. Have a great week!