7 quick takes
Blog
1. Good morning! It's been a while since I wrote. In Cape Town I had a good rhythm and I wrote nearly every Monday morning but here, where days and dates have little meaning, it's hard to keep that up. But that should not be an excuse, I write to store the memories for later (I cannot trust my scatterbrain to do that in a reliable way) and around here there is enough that happens that I want to remember when the girls are big and Malawi days a distant memory.
2. A few weeks ago there was a happy excitment tangible in the village. Chinese boats would come and every person would receive 50 kilograms of rice from the Chinese government because our region and food security was heavily affected by both droughts and flooding in the past years. The boat came, the bags were big and heavy and people got months worth of food. The excitement didn't last long. Soon stories made their rounds of the poisonous rice that would make people sick. The rice looks very different than local rice and it tastes different too. Even the mice and rats won't eat it. Now people say you need to wash it 2 times with hot water and rince it once with cold water before you can cook it. People eat it but they will all be happy when it is finished.
3. A quick rustling, swaying of grass in a different direction than what the wind would cause and sometimes a quickly disappearing tail. When we walk on the narrow path to the village or along the lake shore it is hard to miss the fact that we share our space with many reptiles. Most of the times it's a small lizard, sometimes a big monitor lizard and every now and then a snake. Sophie and I were on our way to our house when we saw a green something cutting to the short grass in front of our feet. We followed the thin small snake with our eyes until he dissapeared in the woods. We later learned that it was the completely harmless herald snake. What a fascinating place to live!
4. "Some guests are on their way!" The local people are much quicker on the rocky uneven paths than most tourists are and approaching walking guests never go unnoticed. When people are hiking to our lodge they never come as a surprise, even if they did not book because there is always a fast walking Malawian who quickly comes to tell us his observation. We may not have cell phone reception here but the local communication network is impressive. It is not always fail proof though. Last weekend some guests were going to take the ferry back to Nkatha Bay. In order to catch the ferry you must first go 20 minutes in a small rowing boat to the place where the ferry stops. They were halfway when someone from the shore told them that they better return as the ferry wasn't seen yet and would not come for at least another 3 hours. They turned around, joined us for a swim in the lake and just as they got in the water the ferry appeared around the corner. They had to rush back, get dressed in the boat while our staff was frantically rowing and we all learned that we must never trust every messenger.
5. Last week we had an impromptu Christmas in July party. Mary, a dear friend and ex colleague from Cape Town had to travel to Malawi for work a few weeks earlier and she and Sharday (another great friend) had put some things together to spoil us and the girls. She dropped it in Lilongwe, a local friend brought it from Lilongwe to Nkatha Bay and our staffmember there who does buys our groceries and helps with guests put it on the boat. The girls were already sleeping when the boat with groceries and our packages arrived so Hartmut and I enjoyed the gifts twice. Once when we got to unpack the chocolate, the biscuits and a usb stick filled with magazines, books and audiobooks and again the next morning when the girls woke up to new puzzles, books and sweet treats. What a spoil!
6. One of the concerns of living here is the always looming threat of malaria. We have to protect ourselves well but taking malaria medication constantly is not great for your body so we agreed that we would stop after a few months, once we had established where and how we could get treatment. The girls were on lariam, a drug that is know to be very effective but some of the most common side effects are psychological. We started noticing that Sophie started to become more angry and aggressive than she was before. We were not sure where it came from. Maybe it was a development stage, an effect of the big changes in her life or, and this is what I was hoping, maybe it was a side effect of the lariam when their pills were finished the girls stopped their treatment and slowly most of the screaming and anger dissapeared. I concluded that it must have been the lariam and was happy to have my old Sophie back. Sophie also noticed that she was feeling more stable but had a differemt conclusion. We were sitting on the deck watching the evening sky when she came to be with a beaming face. "I sat in the tree and was thinking a little bit and suddenly I became very emotional. For a while I was often very angry and upset but I don't feel like that anymore because I asked Jesus if he wants to make my heart happy again. Now my heart is full of love and happiness and I don't get so angry anymore. I feel so grateful!" I just gave my sensitive girl a big hug and told her that she should never change.
7. If you follow me on instagram you have probably seen that my oven is finished and it is definitely adding to our quality of life here. It did not take long to figure out how to make a fire that perfectly heats up the clay walls so that they get sufficiently saturated with the heat to bake bread, cakes and muffins. It is great to have fresh crispy crusts, whole wheat muffins and cookies to decorate and we are all loving it!
