7 quick takes

1. The sun is out but not at full strength yet and her reflection in the small waves make it seem as if the lake is covered with a carpet of shiny glitter. When I squint my eyes I can see the mountains of Tanzania in the other side of the lake. On a clear day you can see roads, trees and even the refelction of the sun on the tin roofs. I sit in the lodge's restaurant and stare over the lake. In the foreground are two dug out canoos with four fishermen, trying to catch some fish. They trow out their nets, go around with their boats in a big circle and meet each other at the other side of the circle where they start pulling in their nets as fast as they can.  Sometimes they catch something, often nothing. It's peaceful, guests are slowly waking up, the staff is busy in the kitchen. We had our breakfast already and Hartmut is playing with the girls while I give myself some time to write.
2. The view from where I sit has gotten a lot better in the past week. We have done some much necessery gardening and tree cutting this week. Rain season is almost over and all that water makes every plant grow five times faster. It still looks like a jungle around here, but at least one that is taken care of. We have only done the small bit around the restaurant, there is still a lot more work to do, but we will do it 'pachoko pachoko' (little by little, as they say here).
3. In a forgotten corner of the kitchen, under a broken big bucket is a pile of old cookbooks. If I would have had regular access to internet I would have most probably ignored the pile, or better yet, thrown them out as they collect dust and attract mice and termites. But in Ruarwe this pile means gold! I spend my morning trying to go through the books to find recipes to add to the menu of the lodge. My eyes get quickly trained to scan recipes, if it says 'grill', 'cool', 'bake' or 'freeze' I skip the recipe to find a better option. I can tell you that my harvest of appropriate recipes was not terribly big. It turns out that most delicious food is baked, grilled of frozen. But I found some gems too so let's see what the guests will think about a new menu!
4. Sometimes in life one takes shortcuts out of laziness or because you think that the consequences can't be that bad. I took one of those shortcuts last week and have suffered the consequences for the past days. It was time to go to bed and I had not yet taken my anti malaria medication. It was dark and I did not feel like searching for the waterbottle with a torch to I decided to just swallow it and hope for the best. How bad could it be after all? Well, very bad it turns out. The capsule got stuck and I woke up in the middle of the night with a burning pressing feeling down my throat. That feeling has not left me and it makes swallowing anything incredibly hard. So hard that I have only had a few bites of every meal for a whole week now. I am glad that the pain seems to be subsiding now because my body is craving some food. So... No more shortcuts for me when it comes to my malaria meds.. The consequences are bad!
5. Hartmut has started to play soccer for the local team. Every small village seems to have their own team and when Hartmut arrived at the pitch they were so impressed with his obvious athletic qualities (😉) and probably with his soccer shoes that he got a start position right away. After the match he was asked to come play again the next day, and the day after that. He kindly declined, mainly because just getting to the field is a workout in itself. The field in on 'signal hill' and a steep climb away. But next week he will go again and we might join in to support him (end connect to the cell phone signal).
6. Last week I wrote that our village would have a new chief this week and I was excited about the party. Well, that did not happen. Apparently they forgot that it would be Easter this week when they set the court date and when the date came the judge was on holiday. The people in the village were dissapointed and everybody is eagerly waiting to hear when the judge will finally make a decision.
7. The girls are doing well, they are getting used to the lodge staff who all love them and want to spoil them all the time. They are getting braver around the lodge and exploring the rocks, trees and all the different places where they can hide. We moved house last week. The owners of the lodge went back to Europe and we moved into their house. It is still only one room but a lot bigger so we could properly unpack and don't need to live out of our suitcase anymore. It brought a lot of peace to all of us because we are starting to feel settled and learning what works and does not work for us. The girls love it to have access to their books and toys and like to go 'upstairs' (our house is a lot higher than the rest of the lodge so we need to climb some rocky steps to get there.) where they can be loud and play as much as they want. In Cape Town they mostly spoke Dutch with each other but now I see that their role play is most of the time in English. Interesting to see how they develop. It's time to go back to them. All the guests are awake and have had their breakfast, time to plan the day. We want to go on a little hike to visit one of the staff members who is sick.

Ps: I wrote this on Saturday morning but I am not quite sure when I will be able to post this.