7 quick takes
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| Our accidental sunset deck. |
- Good morning! How’s your Monday? Hartmut is at work, the girls are playing with Lego and I have chopped, stirred and mixed the ingredients for tonight’s meal (a curried pumpkin-lentil soup) and tomorrow’s meal (vegan Bolognese sauce) up to the point where they can simmer away without my help. So while I am writing this, I expect the house to slowly fill itself with the fragrances of some of our favourite food. Or not. If it starts to smell burned, I know I’ve done something wrong.
- No harm done if it goes wrong, because our favourite food has arrived. Suddenly you can buy mangoes everywhere. If if all goes wrong, I can make a mango salad. It will be the 4th mango salad in the space of five days, but that’s fine. The mangoes that you can buy are still hard and green (perfect for chutney and Thai salad) but if you leave them for a few days, they become yellow and sweet inside. They are delicious and so cheap. On Saturday I bought a bag with about 15 mangoes for 60 eurocent! It’s time to dust off my notebook dedicated to recipes with mangoes because it’s the most affordable ingredient around. Bring on the mango muffins, mango ice cream, mango curries, mango tray bakes and mango smoothies….
- We started the weekend with a plan to build a jungle-gym/treehouse but ended up with a perfect deck for sundowners. I’m not complaining. A while ago, Hartmut bought some old tires and poles to build a climbing structure for the girls. When we were deciding where to put it, we realised that it was quite easy to turn it into a treehouse if we would build it next to a tree. So that’s what we set out to do. When we (I say ‘we’ but mean ‘Hartmut) were almost done, I joined Sophie, who was sitting on top of the deck. She pointed out the setting sun, warm and yellow in the late afternoon sky. ‘Look how beautiful. Let’s get some drinks and chips and enjoy the sunset.’ You must never ignore such a brilliant suggestion, so I rushed inside, got some sunset-essentials and one minute later we were enjoying a beautiful sunset from our new deck. Something tells me that it won’t be the last sunset there…
- I may complain about the fact that mail into Malawi is slow, that packages take long to arrive and that it hasn’t been working at all for us since the world turned upside down for a virus. But have I ever told about the efficiency of Malawi’s internal postal system? It’s phenomenal! No, I am not talking about the formal system, that one is rubbish. But the informal one is great! Last weekend, when we were in Nkatha Bay, we went to one of our favourite metal artists. He had made rings for the girls before, but they had outgrown them so it was time for some new ones. He took their measurements and started working. Unfortunately they weren’t finished before we left. But he was ready on the day that the Ilala ferry left from Nkatha Bay, so he gave them to the barman on the ship. The barman kept us up to date with their location and ETA so when it arrived in Senga Bay two days later, we could pick it up from the boat. It was packaged in haphazardly stapled together strip of paper. There was no name or address on there, because unique and personal service like this doesn’t need that. But it arrived. Almost as fast and efficient, as a 24hour package service in Europe.
- We made use of another efficient informal mail man this week. The girls got spoiled this week, and they could not be happier. Since they got their first box of Lego in December, they have played with it almost every day. Especially after they discovered that you can disassemble whatever you made, and that you do not HAVE to stick with the building plan that came with the box. Lego is beautiful but the downside of all the really beautiful themed sets is that you get loads of very specific blocks but hardly any old-fashioned building blocks. So when it was confirmed that some new colleagues would come to Hartmut’s site from South Africa we bought a nice box of blocks that they could take in their suitcase. It was easy to justify; Lego is one of the most educational toys so this box is an investment towards our home school ;-) Now I’m going to google if there are other cool toys that the same excuse applies too. Or maybe some self-care products for the teacher, because teachers need to be taken care of too ;-).
- The peace has been disturbed. Sophie has a plan for how they are supposed to play. Doris has a plan too, but it doesn’t look anything like Sophie’s plan. Now they are trying to align their plans with blackmailing and screaming at each other. My careful observation of this situation is that that isn’t a very effective way to get people on your side. Sophie is louder than Doris and up to a while ago, Doris would give up and do whatever Sophie said. But times have changed and Doris has realised that she doesn’t always have to give in. It might not be a great development when it comes to peace in our house, but it is great for the character building of both girls.
- I think the food is ready. This blog is too so that worked out great. I have a pretty empty schedule this coming week, nothing big, nothing special. Just our everyday normal which somehow always takes up the hours and days without us even noticing. We’ll try to make the most of it, as we always do, by squeezing in little adventures (I am thinking a lunch in the treehouse, baking and decorating biscuits, a treasure hunt on the beach and a lego building challenge.) and living slow enough to not rush past the small but beautiful things. Happy new week!
