7 quick takes...

Doris and her duck

The muffin stall for  cleaner seas.

1. Good Morning from a windy and hot Senga bay. I did my run, we had our breakfast, checked that the girls dressed themselves (more or less) and now I am ready to write a blog. The girls are playing. They are making a movie, they say, and disturbing them before the movie has a happy ending would be a crime so it’s better to not interrupt them. Hartmut is in Lilongwe, he may be there just for the day but he might stay the night, depending on how things go. ‘How things go’ is something you never know in Malawi so we play it by ear and will see it when we see it. ‘Tiwonege’ is something we often say. It is Tumbuka for ‘We will see’ and has proven to be a very useful phrase in Malawi.
2. ‘I think the people just don’t know that plastic is bad. So I will make a sign to say why it is bad and once everybody had read it I will move it to the next place and I will keep on doing it until everybody knows it and then nobody will throw plastic in nature.’ That’s Sophie’s idea on how to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in nature, and she is right, education can be a great tool! WWF uses education as one of their tools to prevent more plastic to end up in nature and right now they are raising funds to be able to do that. Sophie has joined the fundraising and becoming quite the activist. Last Friday she baked  muffins to sell and made a protest sign to place on the beach and she sold out in minutes! So she has promised the people she will be back this week with more muffins. I like it. It reminds me about when I was little. I was part of the wwf-ranger club and whenever they would ask the ‘rangers’ to fund raise I would go to all the neighbours to ask for money for the rhino’s, the orangutan and the turtles. There is something about that apple and the tree that is painfully true with Sophie and me. Watch the movie at the end of this blog to see Sophie at work. 
3. Facts are not as true as they are often presented to be. Not too long ago people though the earth was flat and flies generated out of garbage. Now we laugh at that. One big part of our homeschooling journey is learning that our knowledge of things isn’t static but constantly evolving. Opinions can change, insights can change and sometimes even facts can change! We are still in the space theme and we learned that Jupiter has more moons that any other planet. How cool was it to read this article (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/10/discovery-20-new-moons-gives-saturn-solar-system-record/) with the girls and discuss what it means. So now Saturn has more moons. Have they always been there? What does that mean for all the books that say that Jupiter has more moons? And how do we know that scientist won’t discover more moons at another planet in the future? How does news like this affect the way we look at facts? I am grateful that coaching the girls gives me an opportunity to learn and sharpen my brain too.
4. We are like new parents of a baby who is learning to walk. Cheering them on, feeling pride as their flapping wings are almost succeeding in another clumsy attempt to lift the heavy bodies of the ground. Our ducks are learning to fly and it is great to watch.
5. Another duck-take because now we have only one big duck left. Yesterday we swapped two of our big ducks with a neighbour for three ducklings (I wrote about the reason for this last week). They are fluffy and cute but also look like they could do with some tlc as they are very dirty and very thin. A few weeks in the loving care of Sophie and Doris will do them good. It has been interesting to watch the one big duck that is still here. I didn’t expect her to have very deep feelings but since her friends has left she has behaved completely different. She will only eat if we pick her up and feed her and she refused to sleep in her house but stood on the roof, looking out for her friends. She isn’t too impressed with the three little ducks and picks them when they come too close. I hope it will change soon because otherwise the swap was a bad idea.
6. Friday wasn’t just about baking and selling muffins; it was also about an interview with the class of Robert, my brother in law. They are doing a project around transport and travel and had to interview somebody who did a lot of travel so they video called us and suddenly the girls and I were on the big screen in a Dutch classroom. It was great and the kids had many interesting questions. The idea was that I would answer them but it did not take long for Sophie to take over and talk so much that I had to stop her. So, if anyone wants insights into our life, call Sophie and you will hear anything you want ;-)
7. It’s time to get going. The girls are doing ‘Dutch’ on the squla app, I have some work things to do and I promised the girls that we would look into constellations today. Have a great week!

This kingfisher flew against our window and needed some love before it flew away again.