7 quick takes...

We celebrate that Hartmut is home!

1. Good morning from our veranda. Our landlord fixed a picnic table that he used when his family included smaller children and in the few days that we have had it, it has proven to be the perfect place for board games, lunch and now also blog writing, it seems. It’s a rather cool morning, there is a breeze and the waves of the lake are breaking violently on the beach. But the sun is out and the coolness will most probably leave us quickly. Hartmut has already left for work, the girls are playing and I have just written my to-do list for the day with ‘writing this blog’ as the first thing to do.
2. Last week I wrote my blog on Sunday evening, and I said that it was because I wanted to try out a new blogging routine. Well, that was true, but not the full truth. Another reason was that I was going to be busy on Monday but I did not want to write about that yet. Hartmut was going to land last Tuesday, and we wanted to surprise him at the airport but because we didn’t have a car we needed to use public transport. That makes the duration of the journey pretty unpredictable so we needed to leave on Monday. Funny enough, the girls and I had the smoothest journey on Monday, and we took about the same time as it would have taken us in a private car. Great! Because we were staying with a Dutch family and a quick journey meant that we had more time with them. We got to know them during the Sinterklaas celebration in Lilongwe last December but the girls play with their kids as if they have known them forever and it is just great how easy it is to be together when you share a language and a culture.
3. While I am writing this I am sipping from my smoothie. Every day we have a smoothie for breakfast and it’s such a good way to start the day. Our current favourite has frozen pineapple, banana and guava. Banana is always available but the other two are seasonal so a few weeks from now our smoothie will probably look very different. It’s very hard to get anything that’s not in season and I think it’s just the way it should be. There is some beauty in being happy in grateful with what is available and having limited choice might not be a bad thing at all.
4. One of the other things we had to do in Lilongwe was going to a doctor with Doris. She wasn’t acutely ill but had a lot of little symptoms that had me worried and especially in a place like Malawi you want to be extra cautious. Fortunately we are starting to have a good network here, and we found a paediatrician who could slot in an appointment during the time we had in Lilongwe. Fortunately all the tests came back with good results so it seems like she is ok. She is just on treatment for giardia now, a nasty bug that usually causes diarrhoea but can also give other weird symptoms. She seems to be doing better now. I don’t if she really had that bug or it’s just the placebo effect, but I don’t care either. She has gone from lethargic to lively and that’s what counts.
5. People are holding up soccer balls, full suits, bunnies, puppies, car gear and food next to my window, in the hope that I will buy it. If you decide that what they have on offer is just what you need, you pull over on the side of the road to start the game of bartering. You can actually buy anything you need to stay alive for a long time on the side of the road in Lilongwe. This time, as we were about to leave the capital, I spotted somebody selling strawberry plants. I did not know that I needed them until the moment I saw them so I urged Hartmut to stop and 5 minutes later we drove away with some nice plants. I don’t even know if it will work here, Lilongwe is a lot cooler that the lake shore so it’s probably too hot but it’s rain season now, so we might have a few weeks of strawberry bliss. Hurray!
6. It’s becoming quite the farm here with all our ducks, a chicken, pigs and lots of plants. When Hartmut signed up for the project that he is working on, it would only be for a short time. It was going to be finished in February, about two weeks from now. Pretty soon it became clear that that wasn’t going to happen and it still feels as if every week  is putting another month of delay on the project so for now we are here, growing strawberries, ducks and roots. We will see how long it lasts while we grow our farm because we never want to look back and regret that we sat around, unable to start new things because we din’t know if we had the time.
7. Two little girls are checking my every move as I have promised them that we will go to the beach as soon as I am done with this blog. Their inquiries about when that might be are becoming more frequent (bout every 30 seconds now) so I guess I better wrap up and go. The beach is always a good idea! Have a great week!

Our neighbours gave us an old jeux de boule  set which is obviously great fun!