7 quick takes

1. Good morning from a very wet Malawi! February is typically one of the months with the highest precipitation and when you wake up it's not a question if it will rain, but how much it will rain. In return we get a beautiful lush garden with every shade of green one can imagine. I am glad it's not this wet the whole year, but we enjoy it while it lasts. 
2. Yesterday there was a lot (A LOT) of rain. Because we live at the foot of a hill and close to the lake, the water from the hill finds it's way to the lake through our garden and yesterday it did that in the most impressive way. We woke up to a very heavy thunderstorm and when we dared to go outside we saw that the path next to our house had turned into a fast flowing river. Fun! But we also saw the power that water has and the damage it can do. In the village, some houses got damaged and the roads that were already bad got even worse. 
3. We started so well today. Sophie is still sleeping and Doris was very motivated to play educational quizzes on my laptop. I would write my blog on the phone. So far so good.  It lasted five minutes. Then it started to rain. Loud. And somehow, that changed the speed of the internet to super-slow. (I feel like I am a broken record, constantly repeating this, but this slow internet is really annoying in times that internet is the glue that holds community together). And did I already mention that the electricity situation is dreadful lately. Every day has more hours without it than with it. Some days I long back to the simplicity of Zulunkhuni. There we didn't have electricity and internet so we never got frustrated that it wasn't there. Now we have a fridge that we would like to be cold, homeschooling that we would like to use internet for, and an expectation that we can communicate with our loved ones with minimal interruptions. But that's seems a bit too much to ask lately.  (But that's all I will say about this because I won't let it spoil my mood.)
4. 'That's brombana,  that's tsirk, that's breastvogelchick'. Our garden is full with chickens and ducks. They are not all ours, but the girls don't care. They have given them (rather weird) names and know their characters. They know which chicks get on and which ones always fight. And they each have a favourite. Sophie loves 'mooist' en Doris loves 'tsirk'. But Tsirk is not ours but Tryson's. Our gardener had helped Tryson with something so he promised him a chicken and the chicken of choice was 'Tsirk'. They caught him and wanted to walk away with him when Doris realised what was happening. Never have I heard Doris cry that loud, or seen that much despair on her face. It helped though, Tsirk didn't become someones lunch and I believe that our entire neighbourhood now knows how much the girls love their birds.  
5. 'What's her name?' A guy walks towards us and points at Sophie. We went to the market to buy some banana's and are now on our way back. Because he is still far, I don't answer him but he comes closer. 'What's her name?' he asks me again? Sophie can talk so I usually refer people to her. If she wants to share her name, she can. 'Ask her' I say. The guy doesn't understand me very well so I say again, 'ask her'.... 'Askeh...' he repeats. 'Askeh.... that's a special name'. Sophie and I giggle and decide to let it go. 'Askeh' is a good name for when Sophie doesn't want to say her real name. We might use it again. 
6. Rain season is mushroom season and we went on a mushroom hunt in the garden (after an explicit and repeated lesson that one should never ever eat mushrooms if you don't know if they are edible.) I was very surprised to see how many different kinds we had. Sophie carefully documented all of them with her camera and when the morning was over, we all knew a little more about mushrooms than when we started. 
7. Time to wrap up. S and D want to play a game and this time it's one that 1. 'I actually enjoy' and 2 'I am invited to participate' so it's time to say good bye. Have a great week dear people, stay dry and sane.