Questions, questions, questions.

In the words of Adele rumour has it I am supposed to have a legal disclaimer on anything I write so that people don’t get it confused with proper commentary on sensible things – personally I think anyone daft enough to confuse this with proper commentary deserves a slap but there we go, and here I go...

I hereby state that anything you have read, are reading, or are going to read on this blog is my own opinion (unless someone has hacked in and said a load of stuff that I didn’t write) and in no-way reflects the views or opinions of anyone else (unless there is a direct quote in here from someone) especially the charity Krizevac, the Malawi Government, the British Government, the US Government (best get them in there as they kick up a fuss about everything and are monitoring all lines of communication), and Google (it’s their blog site and I bet they pay their lawyers a fair wedge!).

Boom. Watertight. That will stand up in court no problem!

And after that legal interlude on with the show.

The first question I asked this week on my first morning back after holiday was to do with the incorrect installation of some support posts that were installed in my absence. To be fair I think it may have been partly my fault for not leaving accurate enough instructions, but that is just another thing that you have to be party to here.

Each of these posts are slightly out of position...

Tuesdays frustrations were taken out in the evening through my now weekly five-a-side football game at one of the local private schools. The rest of the week was spent trying to work out how to repair the problems at work but I think we have a plan now.

Also we are very close to finishing the stand at the netball court which will be a big milestone in the work I am doing out here.

We have a new arrival. She arrived on Wednesday and is another one that works on the other side of the site to me, so I am still the only white person in the construction team. Lindsay is here to be a child care trainer and we have already introduced her to the local bottle store (pub) the games we love such as beans, bananagrams and uno. I think she will fit in just fine.

The Liquor Garden

Thursday was rugby but with a twist. The twist was we didn’t just play rugby and drink beer. On no. We played rugby, drank beer, sang some songs, went onto a pub and then onto a nightclub. There are only two night clubs in Blantyre and this was one of them. To be fair it was better than I was expecting. A long oblong room with a bar at one end and a DJ booth at the other. I even reconginsed some of the songs, but that was mostly because they were western tunes! All in all it was a good night.

Friday came and went and with it came the rest of the questions. Mostly in the form of a good old fashion pub quiz. Held at the local sports club it is fair to say that it was mostly white people attending but a few Malawians did turn up. We did okay on most of the rounds but being that the quiz was organised by the Wildlife Society they were quite picky when it came down to naming the animal picture round. We got a lot of half marks there.

We came 7^th out of 17 and most importantly beat the team we went with – this also meant we won a prize of two crates of beer. A well earned prize indeed.

Upon leaving the quiz we were also faced with more questions. No we were not so drunk we couldn’t find the car. What we did find though was a grass hopper on the top of our car that Pam spent around 5 minutes photographing – it was posing and everything.  We all jumped in the car and that was when I asked the most revealing question of all...

‘Do we have seat covers?’

Now you may not think this is a revealing question but when you have four people sitting in a car that is the same model as yours, looks like yours, you do question why it has seat covers when your car doesn’t. Yep penny dropped we had let ourselves into someone else’s car. I have never seen four people exit a car quite so quickly. What we had also failed to spot was that, despite taking pictures of it, their roof does not have a roof rack!

We quickly re locked the car (our key worked we didn’t break in) and jumped in our own car to high tail it out of there before anyone could report us!

Saturday Pam was in work and so I took the opportunity to use the hospital network to impart information to my parents regarding what to bring out – mostly cheese. Then we had a late lunch.

Sunday was spent in more frustration by the fact that we had no water or electricity for the entire day. Sometimes it is nice to be reminded that we do live in a relatively primitive country. Still piggin annoying though.

This is not the grasshopper but it is weird!

I need to pause here and mention something about Pam’s week. It has been special in every sense of the word.

So Wednesday night Pam decided to go to bed with a glass of water. No big deal until after we had turned the light off and she placed her kindle down there was a tinkle and a splash. Don’t panic the kindle is alright but there was water everywhere. So we got up, tidied up and then went back to bed. Where Pam went one better on replacing her kindle and knocked the glass off. We have concrete floors and guess what  - the glass lost. So up we got again and tidied up.

Then Sunday she decided one glass was not enough and picked up another with wet hands. Guess what - concrete floor 2 glasses 0.

Not content with glasses she decided to try and break herself. So our khonde has a concrete ledge about a foot high. Pam tripped on the drain and landed shin on one leg and knee on the other right on the corner. Wow I thought she had broken her leg the size of the egg that came up. But with peas and gin to the rescue she has recovered.

And then that leaves with today. I got back into full swing of writing although I think it was fair to say that I am currently rearranging the book rather than rewriting. I will then I have to go back through it to make sure it makes sense and then another check to make sure it is top notch. All in all we are getting there. I am hoping to have the final final draft done by the time I leave here.

Me with a full on man of the wilds beard! Grrr

A little something I saw for Graham Smith.

And that, people, was the week that was.

STATMAN

Number of cuts pam got from broken glass – 2

Number of bruises – 4 (including khonde trouble)

Number of posts that need to move – 5 (all)

Weeks of beard growth – about 6

Time I got in on Friday morning – 3am

How long it took us to realise we were in the wrong car – about 10 minutes

Points we scored in the quiz – 74/100

Best answer – Guessing that the only Malawian singer I have heard of was the right answer for the name of some backing group – Lucius Banda

Number of beers we have won - 20