7 quick takes...

04 June

7 quick takes...

1. It´s quarter to two in the afternoon, Doris and Hartmut are taking a nap, Sophie and I are hanging out on the big bean bags in our reading corner. She is reading, I am typing. The rooster of the neighbours is making himself heard and in the distance I hear the waves of the lake roll up on the beach. Welcome to the first blog from our new house, our new life. It´s been almost a week since we arrived and it has been a good one. We have gotten to know our neighbours, learned where we can buy our groceries (and we feel very pleased with the variety of things we can get in our village) and are starting to find our way around here. On Monday, we rented a car to go to Lilongwe, the capital, to stock up on kitchen essentials like olive oil, seeds, condiments and lots of spices and I can hardly explain how excited I am about having my own kitchen to bake and cook up a storm.
2. At first we wanted to do the first part of our move on the boat (we had no choice as a helicopter was too expensive J) and the second part by bus but we quickly realized that loading ourselves and all our belongings on and off the boat and on and off several busses would be very stressful. And because the Ilala stops even closer to our new house than to our old house we decided to do the entire move on the boat. It would be long, but it would be an adventure so we got on the boat and just hoped for the best. The cabins were booked out so to add to the adventure, we pitched a tent on the top deck of the boat, filled it with our stuff so that it would not blow away in the rather heavy storm and we had a much better time than we ever anticipated. The boat is pretty big so we could walk around for a change of scenery, go to the restaurant for some food or a table to play games on and the 50 hours on the boat definitely did not feel that long. Well, except for the last hour, when we saw Senga Bay slowly coming into sight, that hour felt like a day on its own because we were just so excited to get there.
3. ´Two hours, maybe three´, was what the captain said when I asked him how long we would stop in Likoma. I am sure that he knew that I knew that that was never going to be the case. Judging by all the maize that was loaded on the boat to be offloaded on Likoma it would be a lot longer than that. And we did not even know yet how much fish the island´s fishermen would want to ship to the mainland but I knew that it is usually a lot. The stop lasted almost 12 hours. Fortunately we know people on the island and we had a great stop over that included a nice breakfast, playing on the beach, some chill time with pigs and ducks and a boat ride on a traditional sailing boat back to the big ship. Sometimes it´s hard to believe that we have only been here just over a year because people like Andrew, who hosted us on the island, have grown dear to us. I have written a lot about the hospitality of the Malawians but I don´t think that I have said much about the hospitality of the (mostly non Malawian) lodge community. This community has been amazing. From the moment we moved to Malawi they gave us a feeling of belonging, a feeling of friendship and the sense that we could ask for help whenever we needed it. The lodge community in Northern Malawi is a tight knit network of people who could be in competition with each other but choose to be friends instead.
4. Moving into a furnished house is easy, especially when you don’t bring many belongings. Within two days the suitcases were unpacked and we made the house a home; it took about the same time to feel comfortable here. Our biggest help has been Tryson. When we rented the house we did not realize that it wasn´t just fully furnished but also fully serviced. This means that Tryson comes 6 days a week to clean, do the dishes, change the beds, wash laundry and help wherever we need his help (As if I need more help when somebody does everything for me already). It´s a bit awkward and takes some getting used to to have someone in your house all the time so I am grateful that Tryson is one of the friendliest, most gentle men I have ever met. I am afraid that, as much as we now need to learn to get used to him, we will really have to get used to not having him around when we move away from here.
5. Our new house is almost everything we could have hoped for. We love the location (on the beach and close to the market), we love the garden (big with grass to run on, trees to climb in and lots of little corners to explore) and the house itself (with a wonderful kitchen, a comfortable patio, nice beds and a great hot shower). The only thing we don´t love is the creatures we are currently sharing it with. Ten of them I could live with, a hundred of them I would tolerate but the place is filled with millions of tiny ants that take over every corner, every surface and every wall. Sweeping them away seems pointless, because every time we broom we easily collect a dustpan full of ants (can you imagine) but an hour later we can repeat that process again. Yesterday in Lilongwe we bought everything that ants, according to the internet, hate so armed with cinnamon, baking soda, poison and vinegar we are back in the battle… let’s hope we win!
6. You know that you have a cool new neighbour when you within 15 minutes from meeting each other for the first time you end up on a small catamaran sail boat with him because he invites you right away for a boat ride. I love sailing so I could not say no. Feeling the waves, the wind, the water and seeing the beautiful shore from a boat is just so special. My host and I (He is a 83 year old Scotchman who has lived over 50 years in the country) went to one of the local lodges and there I realized that we have definitely moved from the rural North to the expat world close to the capital. Within minutes we were drinking a beer with a high ranking British army official and my host and he were on a first-name basis with the high commissioners from Malawi and her neighbouring countries. This is definitely a different Malawi from the Malawi we have known so far and after just one week here I am already forced to add many chapters to my understanding of what Malawi is. Not a bad thing.
7. This week is for groceries, planning a few things, settling and getting ready for the next trip. Hartmut was supposed to have started in early June but the project got delayed and now he will only start in the beginning of July. This means that we have a month to kill. A friend of ours (again, that lodge community) has recently taken over the management of a beautiful lodge in Mozambique and he has invited us to come. It´s not often in your life that you have time to kill and an invite to a beautiful place so Friday we will go back on a boat to cross the lake to Mozambique. I won´t complain!