7 quick takes...

21 September

7 quick takes...

Hartje

Good morning from my spot next to the duck pool. I want to clean it. But before I do so, I always let the pigs bath in it. They make the biggest mess, which means that they can only bath there when I am going to clean it anyway. Today they are taking their sweet time, so I thought I might as well grab my phone and start writing a blog. It's not a bad place to sit anyway. The morning sun is glorious and not yet too warm. The mango tree provides shade and the pigs and ducks provide entertainment.
I don't know what to cook tonight. Do you have those days that you feel very picky? It's also because I thought this week would be easy food wise. We went to Lilongwe on Friday. Normally, after a shopping trip, our fridge and cupboards are full and cooking is easy. This is not the case now. We left early to make the most of our day, but 'most' didn't turn out to be as much as we hoped for. First Hartmut dropped us off at our favourite coffee shop (there is a playground, and a great menu... What more could we want). Then he drove to the garage for a car service and a tire change. That would take the whole morning. In the best case he would be done before noon so that we could lunch together and spend the afternoon going to the different shops to pick up all the groceries we would need. We have lived long enough in Malawi to know that that was extremely optimistic, so we already kinda knew that lunching together wasn't going to happen... But in reality none of our afternoon plans happened. After a whole morning at the coffee shop, I went with friends to their house so that the girls could play there (thanks Minke!). The plan was that I would take a taxi to Hartmut so that we could do groceries together. But my taxi who had promised to be there in 15 minutes wasn't there after an hour. Not that Hartmut was waiting for me because he was still busy too. After the car was supposedly finished, he drove away but some strange noises gave away that there was more broken than fixed. So that took a lot longer too. In the end I cancelled the taxi, and sent Hartmut a shopping list for only one supermarket (so much harder than just doing the shopping). By the time he was done, all the other shops were closed, and we drove home with a car that was a lot emptier than we expected. I'll have to be a bit more creative in the kitchen the next few weeks. It's ok, we still have plenty of food and in a country like Malawi, I feel like you can't really complain about not having all the food you want if you have more than enough to survive.
Today will be about bringing the house back to order after the weekend. I need to sort laundry, unpack our bag and do the things that I wanted to do this weekend (like cleaning the duck pool) because we went, rather spontaneously, on a weekend away. Hartmut has a lot of South African colleagues, and they invited us along to a South African party with Sokkie and a potjie competition. That I didn't win the potjie competition didn't come as a surprise. Because of the shopping disaster, I wasn't able to buy everything I needed and instead, it was a potjie with pantry basics. It wasn't that it wasn't tasty, it just wasn't as good as I had planned it to be. But that didn't really matter, the fun that was had, was much more important. As we all love dancing, it wasn't a surprise that the girls liked the Sokkie. 'This is better than a birthday party!' Sophie said with a big smile on her face. For those of you that don't know; 'Sokkie' is a South African music/dance style. It's not the kind of music that I normally listen to, but when it's limited to one evening a year, it's very enjoyable. It has the kind of beat that makes it impossible to not dance to it, so at the end of the night, we were all tired because we had danced so much. It was definitely worth the drive.
(a few hours later) I have learned a lesson. Pigs are smarter, stronger and faster than I am. It's afternoon now and most of my morning was spent chasing pigs. While I was concentrating on the blog, the pigs ran away and by the time I noticed that they were gone, they had wandered down the garden and had made their way onto the beach. I tried to get them back, but they really enjoyed their new-found freedom. It must have been quite a sight, two pigs frolicking in the sand and a red-hot mzungu running after them while the pigs had no intention of listening to what the mzungu told them. One man wasn't bothered by the commotion. He was sleeping on the beach. Unfortunately, he pigs grunting and my yelling did not wake him. I tried to divert the pigs, but they ran straight to him. When they were close they started sniffing his feet. That finally woke him up. He jumped up and ran for his life. Never before have I seen someone wake up with such a fright. Fortunately he realised they were only pigs, and he came back while we both laughed. It took an hour before I had the pigs back in their house. At least I can tick 'work-out' and 'cleaning the animal houses' of my to-do list because these pigs gave me a run around.
On Wednesday we will celebrate Hartmut's 35th birthday. Although, we won't party much that day. That will come in the weekend. We are going to give him a very strategic present, that we'll all get to enjoy as we are going to go away for the weekend. We have booked a very nice lodge on a small island that we can actually see from our house so the journey won't be long. We have heard amazing things about the place, so we cannot wait.
This is the first blog posted from my new laptop. You won't feel the difference but it makes me so happy. When we had the break-in, the thief also took my laptop that I had only had for about 3 months. I had just installed everything to make it the laptop of my dreams and then it was gone. However, he left a very old, very slow laptop behind (clever, he wouldn't have gotten much for it anyway) that I have been using the past few months. Did I say that it was slow? And old? And really really frustrating? The laptop was insured, so I got the money for a new one a long time ago but living in Malawi during covid times made it hard to get the one that I wanted. Here, you pay twice the price for a laptop that's twice as slow. And when you need a very fast machine for movie and photo editing, it's just not worth it to buy it here. I had to wait a very long time but now it's here. And it's fast, and beautiful and really nice. I am just trusting that the thief doesn't read it. But in case he does, we have also installed many more locks so getting in will be a lot harder!
That was the blog for this week. It's almost 5pm and I still don't know what to make for supper. Suggestions are very welcome ;-) I hope you are all well. Have a great week!