7 quick takes...

1. It’s not as stormy as last night. Last night, loud wind and louder thunder made the house shake. The girls are asleep, the electricity just came back so I can start my laptop and I want to write (at least part of) my blog tonight because I can and because it seems like a good idea. Hartmut is still in Namibia so I can choose between reading a book, mindless scrolling on my phone or writing and I guess it’s obvious now what I picked.
2. It’s hard to concentrate on writing a blog when you have the fluffiest little duckling right in front of you. And that’s exactly what is happening right now so I’ll see how far I get with my idea of starting to write on Sunday evening. This afternoon Sophie came in a panic to me ‘one of the ducklings doesn’t move, maybe it’s going to die!’. When I walked to the duck house, I saw what she saw and thought the same. We brought the sick little duck inside. Partly to be able to give her (or him, hard to know with ducks) some extra care but also because we didn’t know what was wrong. Maybe it was contagious and if she was going to die, I wouldn’t want the other ducklings to catch the same thing. She seems to be doing much better already. While I brought the girls to bed she jumped out of the, rather tall, basket that we kept her in and when I came downstairs, she was waddling and sliding over our slippery floor, clearly looking for her mom. When I picked her up and wrapped her in a fleece blanket, she seemed happy too so that’s where she is now for as long as she’ll like it.
3. Last week I wrote that we were waiting for the outcome of the court case against the president and the electoral commission. And man, did they let the country wait. They announced the week before that a summary would be read at nine in the morning but they failed to inform the people that that summary was about 500 pages. It took them the whole day to come about halfway (imagine an entire country glued to the radio for that long, that’s binge listening!) and then they had to have a quick meeting to decide whether it was safe to continue or if it was better to leave the rest for the next day. Fortunately they agreed that continuing was better, and that they should also skip some pages. The outcome that everybody was waiting for was better than the opposition could have hoped for and a real victory for justice, anti-corruption and democracy. The result of the previous elections are no longer valid and new elections will take place within 150 days. Exciting times for Malawi!
4. Voices who share stories, the clattering of cups on plates, a table full dishes with remaining pieces of cake, cooled down coffee and some forgotten pieces of popcorn. That’s the state I love our house to be in but here it doesn’t happen nearly as often as I would like to. But Saturday the house was full of voices and dirty dishes and it was wonderful! The ladies in our church had their first ladies gathering and I was grateful that I got to host it. Together with one of the other ladies I baked a cake, some other people brought bread (white bread is an essential party snack in Malawi) and it was wonderful to share time and space with women who seem so different on the surface but share so much at the core. We may not speak the same language, or even understand each other’s language enough to have a conversation, we may not know or understand each other’s cultures; but we were all women, mothers, wives and above all, daughters of the King and that unites.
5. Geology is still the theme in school as we are not done learning about it (will we ever be done? It’s such a big topic and there is so much to learn…. But this week I wrote ablog on mamaplaats about a really cool experiment that we did to understand how rocks are made. Follow the link to read and let me know if you need a translation. 
6. It’s finally morning after a long stormy night. The three of us slept in my bed because the thunder was loud and so was the rain. Everything outside our warm blankets feels damp. It’s not because our house leaks but because rain season makes the humidity linger longer, everything is wet, even if it doesn’t rain. It’s a good excuse to stay in bed for a while. We read books, we watched a baking tutorial on YouTube (it’s our guilty pleasure, watching all the cakes we will bake once we live in a place where we will have access to ingredients and stable electricity) and now Doris looks at me as she wraps her arms around me. I smile. ‘I am the luckiest’ I say, ‘I am the luckiest because I get to be your mom. You two are more than I could have ever imagined. ‘ Doris smiles too ‘Yes, you are the luckiest, because we are really really nice girls.’ Can I please freeze this moment? So I can enjoy it a little longer, so that I can come back to it when I, or they, need to be reminded about innocence, confidence and how loved they are?
7. I brought the duckling back to her mom. She seemed much better and I still believe that the real mom does a better job than I would do. I am tired and it’s time to go to bed. Sorry, that’s not a very energising way to end this blog, but the reality of a Sunday evening. Have a great new week!