It was the week before christmas and all through the house...

23^rd December

 

 

nothing was stirring except for the flying termites…

 

 

And the giant African land snail in the garden

 

And the huge centipede that decided to wander through our kitchen.

 

So the flying termites come out at about 7 or 8pm and fly round the lights. They are like the ants only huge and you can hear them clunking into the walls and doors. In the morning again all you see is a sea of wings that have fallen off. These are the termites that they eat over here. Soak in warm water for a few short minutes until the wings fall off. Pat dry with some kitchen roll, or leave in the sun for a few seconds! Then lightly fry them with a small drop of oil. Season to taste. I have yet to try them but apparently they are a delicacy.

The snail was about the same size as a tennis ball. I really wouldn’t want to accidently step on one of those.

The centipede was just wandering round the house. He looked fairly chunky (hence the ‘he’) and when I tried to pick him up with the fly swot he gripped it and started crawling towards the handle. I am only glad Pam told me they are quite poisonous (not fatal but quite painful) after I had launched him out the back door. Sorry about the poor photo but pams phone is playing up so that is a picture of a picture.

 

So wildlife aside what has happened this week. Well let me tell you! So Tuesday was a pretty rubbish day. We had heavy rains over the weekend and a lot of our building work was er, squishy and some had to have copious amounts of mud and water dealt with. So I left in a pretty deflated mood. Now on the way home the kids play football all along the streets – but they use burnt plastic bags and bricks. Seriously get about 5-10 plastic bags inside each other, tie the last one off and then burnt the handles away, it’s a pretty good ball. So the bricks are offset from each other and are about two foot apart. Makes it more interesting when there is only 8 of them playing.

So (where was I?!) on my way home I was walking through one of these games of football when behind me I heard the crunch of a tackle flying in. Next thing I know the ball and squirted out straight through my legs and as I took my next step I caught it and directed it straight into the goal. Well the street when nuts! Malawians thing everything is highly funny, so much so that one of my foreman struggled to tell me he was having chicken and rice for Christmas lunch because such a meal is so funny!? Anyway all the players were laughing and cheering, the spectators all eight of them were laughing and cheering, even the man in the stall on the corner cheered, so I took my applause, made the appropriate celebrations and walked the rest of the way home with a smile on my face.

 

Saturday was Christmas day for us. We had roast chicken, mash potatoes, roast potatoes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower cheese (soooo good), bread sauce and Yorkshire puddings. I made us some homemade crackers, with a manual ‘bang’ and homemade jokes. I could tell you some of them but they are all Malawi based so erm they would be even less funny!

We also managed to get some Malawians playing twister. One of them had never seen twister before!

 

We also had a bit of a gangster moment. So Malawi is a cash based country, not many shops take cards. So Pam, myself and another volunteer decided to go and get some cash for our up coming holidays. Not knowing how much to get we all ventured on better safe than sorry. The issue is the highest denomination of Kwacha is 1000. Which is about £1.50. So we got out a bit, the only problem was we put it all in one bag to keep safe. But as we were pulling out of the parking on the street a traffic warden wandered over to asking for parking (20p for 1 hour). Pam took the bag to get some money but somehow the bag was upside down. 400 bank notes fell out into the back of our car. The traffic warden looked completely bemused, especially when we gave him the parking money and then drove away very quickly.

 

It doesn’t feel like Christmas though. There is no hype here. Only one shop I have seen over the weeks has Christmas decorations in it and that is the big supermarket. We have very limited fancy food and the nice stuff is really quite expensive. And as much as I am sure everyone is shivering and cold at home it is too warm for Christmas.

The other thing to consider is the graph. Apparently, according to Pam, there is a long term overseas graph of peoples emotions. Around 2-3 months the novelty wears off and you begin to miss all the things that make home home. That period is around now so combine that with Christmas and both missing family and friends it is a bit subdued.

 

We also got invited to Pam’s bosses for Sunday lunch with a load of the Doctors from the hospital. And what a lunch it was. To you it will seem like a normal meal, but to Pam and I it was good old fashion home cooked fare. A boiled gammon (Nigella’s recipe in coke……takes on a whole new meaning now) with little fried potatoes, roasted veg, tomato salad, macaroni cheese. It was a little slice of home.

 

But now we are officially on Christmas holiday. Currently I am sitting on the khonde at Dedza Pottery Lodge writing this have made the three and a half hour journey up the M1. It is better than the UK one for traffic, but not great for pot holes or lunatic drivers, or stray livestock.

I also got stopped for ‘speeding’. Being just before Christmas there is a lot of traffic police around. One flags me down and, after the pleasantries have been exchanged, the conversation when something like this;

‘You were speeding’

‘no I wasn’t’

‘yes you were you were, we have a camera’ (points to said camera which I don’t think was on or the man using it knew what he was doing)

‘no I was doing 30’

‘are you sure’

‘absolutely’

‘oh okay then. Thank you’

And off I drove!

 

Found these aswell - childish but funny!

So all is left for me to say is that I hope you all have a very merry Christmas wherever you are – for those of you that we are related to hopefully we can skype at some point over the festive season!

I am now going to sit in the sun with a cup of tea and read my book.

 

STATMAN

 

Number of crackers made – 12

Chickens consumed – 3

Food left over – about half the veg and none of the meat!

Blantyre to Dedza – 229km

Time taken – 3.5 hrs

Number of bites whilst sitting on the khonde – 4 obviously dedza mossies find me tastier than the Blantyre ones do

Nights away from people we know – 5 (no offence people we know but it is nice to get away)

SLEEPS UNTIL CHRISTMAS – ONE!!!

Ants, Ministers and Exhausts

16^th December

 

So the rains have really started. It has rained every day. Some just a dribble but yesterday wow! We had thunder and lightning for a good half an hour before hand and then the heavens opened. We stood out on our khonde and watched a torrent of brown water run past, occasionally shouting at the neighbours who were standing on their khonde watching it run past! (Khonde is African for veranda).

All the roads are strewn with rubbish and mud and rocks that have been washed into the roads.

Friday was a busy day as well. One of the departments in the beehive family, Tailoring and Fashion, has finished the course that they run and as such all the students were graduating. It is a massively important day for the students so they had a visiting dignitary. This year it was the Minister for Labour. As a department head I was invited to join the contingent.

 

 

She seemed very nice dressed in a lovely pink sequined dress. Not to be out done by Dave, Barrack and the bird from Denmark, the children centre manager and I attempted a selfie with her in the background. Our stealth was ruined somewhat by our receptionist who yelled ‘SELFIE’ from the other end of the corridor. That and the fact that by the time we got sorted the minister was half way down the corridor.

On the wildlife front we are being plagued each night by flying ants. They swarm the lights in black winged clouds of doom. Well there are a lot of them anyhow. And as our front door doesn’t quite shut properly we have to put a towel down to stop the march of the ants underneath. In the morning the only evidence of the night’s activities are the hundreds of wings that are lying around. Weird!

 

Jimbeckerzoid – we have named the car Jimbeckerzoid because it is our version of the Chichewa word for hope – as in we hope it will survive 12 months so we can sell it. But this month it’s had a bit of a rough time. So first we had a puncture, I have changed the tyre but need to get the spare fixed now. Then the stone chip in the window – Autoglass haven’t made it out here yet – has started to grow across the windscreen then today on the way back from town I went over a large speed bump and heard a big clunk and scrap. Yep the exhaust just fell off. What was more annoying was the three Malawians who dived under the car to help pull it off – a job I could well manage myself – and then expect money for their inconvenience! Luckily I know a man with a welding rig and a workshop so tomorrow my metal work foreman has a very important job of fixing my car!

 

In Christmas news we have booked our accommodation. So on the 23^rd we leave Blantyre to drive north to the town of Dedza, famed for the potteries (if it’s like Stoke I’ll be gutted!). We stay there three nights over Christmas with day trips to Lilongwe for slap up Christmas lunch, there is some really old rock art near there and a bay that is quite nice. Then onto Mua Mission which is an old Catholic Mission with an amazing garden where we can chill out for a couple of nights and then on the 28^th we go to Cape MaClear, at the bottom of Lake Malawi for the New Years Party. Quite looking forward to it!

This is me bravely deflecting the water with my flip flop - see last weeks blog regarding the burst pipe! 

 

 

STATMAN

 

Rainfall – 6cm in 1 hour

Average size of a flying ant – 3cm

Cost of three Malawian exhaust technicians – 500 kwacha (80p)

 

Cost of rewelding and repair - 0 Kwacha

Size of crack in windscreen – 15cm and growing

Drink of choice on Sunday – Sherry and JC Le Roux – NICE!

D&V, SA and A&F

9^th December

 

They’ve found me out! They have found me and they have found me out! No not the charity about the fact that I don’t know what I am doing and am making it up as I going along. No I mean the other volunteers. One of them has been snooping around the internet and has found this blog. It means I have to be more circumspect about what I post! Ha.

In actual fact it does raise an interesting question as to how honest this blog is. The truth is it is honest in what is put up here but dishonest by omission. There are things I haven’t posted for various reasons, some because it would be unprofessional. Some because it could be classed as libel and I could find myself in a spot of bother and some because my parents would worry.

 

Anyway on with the show. Well this week has been are relatively quiet week, forced upon me due to the illness I mentioned last week. Wednesday was mostly spent in bed trying to retain fluids but by Thursday I managed a whole six chips at dinner. To be fair even Friday I was still pretty tired but I received an unexpected visit from our HR manager. Just to see how I was. She arrived with our PR representative, not sure if that is part of her role, and a carton of guava juice. It was very nice too.

So Saturday I felt strong enough to face the world and we ventured out to the local shops. It would appear that event Blantyre has a chapter of the Salvation Army and they were playing for money at the local Mall. There performance was....well....lets settle for enthusiastic.

 

Following that we decided to treat ourselves to some lunch at one of the nice local hotels where the waiter decided it would be a good idea to throw a bottle of coke over me. Nice.

Lunch was very nice, coffee, followed by bbq chicken kebab with rice. And to really push the boat out we had tea and an ‘English Tea Scone’. When said scone arrived it was pre cut with a splodge of jam. When we enquired if there was any cream or butter the waiter nodded. Luckily I was more cautious with the butter when it returned only using the packaged stuff, Pam was more adventurous and spread the unknown knob on her scone and was surprised to find that it was infact garlic butter. This is the same hotel that has been known on more than one occasion to server ham and cheese croissants on pain au chocolates!

 

So as in Europe it is the same in Africa and Sunday followed Saturday. It started with a bang when the fire the guards set to burn stuff ( they burn everything over here. Bunch a pyromaniacs the lot of ‘em. All our rubbish gets burnt in a pit in the ground.) but they hadn’t known about the plastic water pipe underneath. I’d like to say I saved the day but really it was one of the guards John, who with nothing more than a strip of rubber and a crisp packet (empty) bound up the leaking section. I did find the stop cock that turned off the supply that allowed him to perform the same trick on the second leak which occurred moments later.

 

 

Disaster averted we went clothes shopping. Here is the market that we ventured down and of course you are white and so must visit every single shop. We do get harassed quite a lot out here and surprisingly prices seem to multiply when we appear.  Most, if not all the clothes at this particularly market, are second hand and I think come from charities across the world. Not sure on how they end up being sold for profit over here but there you are. I found a very nice pair of shorts that I liked but declined due to the fact the man wanted £10. He did try and convince me that they were genuine Abercrombie and Fitch, but I did have to point out that they were in fact genuine Abercrombe and Eitch.

 

One last issue that is slowly but steadily raising its head is the weather. Not the rain, more the lack of rain. After the post with the picture and all the water and the big downpour, well everyone planted their seeds expecting the rains to come but no more have. There is the first murmurings of drought and prices of food are already starting to rise. The sad truth of it is that a lot of families out here rely on the country’s ability to produce maize. That coupled with the cash gate scandal – the ‘alleged*’ government theft meaning that a lot of foreign financial aid has stopped coming into the country it could be a testing few months.

 

*this is to ensure I don’t get deported or jailed. What!? It works for Have I Got News For You!

 

STATMAN

Amount of money the government allegedly* stole – 14 billion kwacha (24 million pounds)

Number of notes the Salvation army hit – ½ - not half a note in the whole time we were there, half the notes they attempted.

Cost of our fancy pants lunch - £12

Height of the maize – 1 foot

Height the maize should be – 3 foot

Months since I was last clean shaven – er when did Graham get married?? 

Cheese and wine

4^th December

 

Okay. Apologies for not posting yesterday. The simple truth was that all of yesterday was spent in one of three positions. 1 – lying down in bed. 2 – sitting on the toilet. 3 – kneeling down in front of the toilet. Yes it has finally come around and got me. The good Doctor has diagnosed it as viral gastroenteritis, to you and me it is plain old D&V. So yeah yesterday was fun. I am still off work today but having managed 6 chips and a piece of bread at dinner yesterday I have moved on to the heady heights of toast today. Checkazee me! I won’t be posting any photos of yesterday you’ll be glad to know.

 

2^nd December

 

Another one bites the dust. This week saw the last remaining volunteer leave the construction department. I am on my own in that office now, well the only mzungu, the others work at the children centre. It was sad as Malcolm has put a lot of effort into the projects and will be missed. So on Tuesday we went out for a leaving meal to a very nice pub called the Village Green where we sat outside in the evening heat and eat and drank. Then on Thursday night one of the expats who he had helped invited us round for dinner, where the starter was a cheese course. Now you may think this strange, but let me tell you good cheese, I mean proper cheese is hard to come by out here and expensive. Man was that a treat for us!

 

 

Saturday we had another braai for one of our friends here. Some twenty or so Malawians descended on us for beef  burgers and chicken kebabs.

Pam also managed to retrieve from the post office her birthday parcel from our friend lisa in the UK. It has only taken two and a half months and the woman in the post office asked why we had taken so long to collect it! We only found out that day but it had been in the post office for 10. The cheek of it. But due to the magazines we are all up to date with the gossip as it was two months ago!

 

Two more skype firsts for us. My brother, Simon and his wife Alison and their gorgeous little boy Sebastian tuned in for a chat. He has grown so much since we left it is untrue. And then Pam’s Dad and Helen called us Sunday to tells all about planting garlic and the hazards of an untidy garage.

 

Christmas has come. We went to a carol concert on Sunday by the Blantyre Musical Society. Some very lovely singing, amazing harmonies, and some unbelievable high notes hit, but enough about my participation! No seriously they were very good and lovely. The orchestra was a little bit more hit and miss, mostly hit. The young musicians were, well they were very enthusiastic and energetic.

We have even put up our Christmas tree. Yes it is a baobab and yes some of the decorations are coke bottle tops. I only hope that the Royal Mail forwarding service includes telling Santa where to go too...ho ho ho.

 

 

One of the funniest things to happen is an incident with Pam. So for a bit of context because people don’t have cars here they wave at you to stop for them to give them a lift somewhere. If you have a very big truck you can get up to, oh I’d say around 200 Malawians in the back of one, well at least they think so. So when Pam stopped at the top of our road to plug the iPod in she couldn’t really blame the guy who jumped in next to her for thinking she had stopped for him. He asked her was she was going to Blantyre, to which she replied ‘er yeah sure,’ and gave the man a lift!

 

We have also invented the new game of flip flop golf. It is a very simple game. Select a hole, we used the porch of the main house. Choose the boundaries of the fairway, trees and paths are usually good. Then see how many ‘wangs’ technical term here please, it takes to kick your flip flops onto the hole. I won by the way, 20 strokes to Pam’s 21, but the bigger issue was the 6 year old Yammie who didn’t fully understand the game or have total control over his pink trainers. We had to spend the next 30 minutes and two guards combing the garden in the dark to find one of his shoes.

 

Here's a big moth.

 

Oh I am a genius as well! So our milk keeps going off because we only really use it for Pam’s tea. What a problem, there must be a solution I hear you cry..........Well there is! Milk cubes. Yes you pour the milk into ice cube trays and freeze it. Then when Pam wants a cup of tea badda bing.

 

STATMAN

 

Hours this week without water – 24 hours

Hours this week without power – 32 hours

Books read so far – 21 (between the pair of us)

Colour of the pool – brown see item number two ( the filter pump ain’t work)

Number of flying ants in the lounge – 8

Number of flying ants killed by a swot wielding pam – 8 (African flying ants mind you, I reckon their wings could break your arm!)

Number of milk cubes required for the perfect cup of tea – 2