7 quick takes

07 March

7 quick takes

Good morning! We’re sitting at the table, the girls and I. While I take a quick moment to write this blog, the girls are trying to finish their work books. The more they do, the fewer books we need to take along. And every traveller knows that the journey is easier when the luggage is lighter.
We’ve booked our tickets and will fly in 4 weeks dv. Booking that ticket felt very final. We had set a date on which we wanted to fly, but we could still just decide to not go (not that we would) but now that there is a ticket we really need to go. We’ll have a three-legged flight. Long, but about half of the price of the regular option (which has two legs anyway) and I’ll definitely take some discomfort over spending too much money on flights.
Even though it is still quite a long time before we fly (or short, depending on how you look at it), two of our four suitcases are packed and ready to go. They are filled with books, board games and the winter clothes; the things we won’t need any more in the coming weeks. I am an avid book hoarder and books are heavy, so I was nervous that we would have way too much weight but it seems like things will be fine now that most of the heavy things are packed already. The girls and I will take the boat on Friday to start our final journey around the lake, Hartmut will follow a week later so we would not need all those books anyway.
It probably helps that we have been throwing and giving away many things over the past weeks. Anything that no longer had use or sentimental value had to go. It’s not always easy to do that sorting, but in a way it’s also freeing to cut out the clutter and strip back to the essentials. And even then, we realise that our footprint is big, that even at our minimum, we have more than we need to stay alive.
We went to the ATM to draw cash this weekend and that caused lots of excitement. Malawi has added a new banknote to its collection. Up to now, the highest denomination you could get was a 2000 kwacha note (this is just over 2 euro) and now they have added a 5000 kwacha note. It’s great, because Malawi is still very cash-heavy and many big amounts need to be paid in cash. The maximum amount of cash you could draw at once at most ATMs was 80,000 kwacha, because the opening of the ATM just wasn’t big enough to give out more. A normal wallet isn’t very useful because the pile you carry around is way too big to fit in it. But on the downside, even a 2000 kwacha note is too big for most market vendors. It’s what we always got at the ATM, but if you take it to the market, people struggle to give you change. I have taken countless cabbages, onions and carrots as change instead, after waiting for the vendor to ask all her neighbours if they had change for a 2000 kwacha note. Now that the bank will mostly give 5000s, that problem will be even bigger.
It has started to rain and Doris, our diligent girl who always thinks for others, runs outside. ‘Quick, mamma, let’s bring the garden chairs inside before they get wet.’ A few seconds later, she comes back inside, her face is sad. ‘I forgot that we gave them away. They are not here any more. I keep forgetting that everything is gone…’ Moving is exciting, but also hard.
I got distracted with a lot of other things, and by now it’s already afternoon. Sophie and Doris are painting, I have done some more sorting and made supper for tonight. I hardly touched my camera this week, so you won’t find a lot of new pictures on this blog. Sorry! Now it’s time to quickly finish this up. Have a great week!