I felt like maybe it was time for another day-in-the-life
style blog – partly because I had such an interesting day on Wednesday! Brian
had invited me to go with him to a reunion meeting for people from his teacher
training college, and then we needed to get lots of nails and wood varnish and
an extraordinary amount of planks to make desks for the Standard 8 classroom.
So here’s how it went...
Wakey wakey - I got up as normal at 5.45am, got myself ready, and then waited for Brian to finish his bath (this is impressive by the way, because it is VERY cold these days at 6 in the morning to have a bath outside just by throwing hot water over yourself!) and together we headed out to the road.
Transport – We managed to hitch a lift almost as soon as we got to the road which was beautiful, it was a bit full of tobacco and babies so Brian found himself doing some athletic repositioning as we went along, which reminded me very vividly of people in action films doing daring deeds in car chases! Our luck run out at Wimbe however, where the truck stopped, then turned around, went back half a kilometre, stopped again, and what seemed like the whole body of passengers got out to talk to a man in a fluorescent police jacket. We then went back the half a kilometre to where we were before and waited for about an hour as the driver gave a statement to the police in their (3x4 metre) office building. It turned out that the truck had recently left a man unconscious in ‘hospital’ in Chamama – the other truck drivers of Chamama had accused the driver of running the man over, but his story was that he had tried to jump up and pull someone off the back while it was still moving, and had ended up falling off and hitting his head on a nasty looking metal bar that stuck out at the back. Traffic safety in rural Malawi is genuinely terrifying at times. On a much more trivial note, the wait was improved greatly by the range of African cakes available across the road – zitumbua with bananas, very well cooked mandasi, and gloriously moist zigumu. I had quite a lot of cake for breakfast.
Emmanuel Teacher Training College – Eventually we arrived and met some of the alumni of Emmanuel Teacher Training College, which seems to me to be an awesome project. The college train really good teachers, and also grow them in their faith, and equip them to run bible clubs for their kids. Once they’ve left, the college do a great job of helping them out – my favourite part of this being the offer of subsidised bicycles, which led to Brian getting, for a third of market price, a Royal Mail bike – from STRATFORD UPON AVON! Exciting times. Anyway, his mates were lovely, and it was encouraging to hear that a few of them actually are running Bible clubs at school. It was a bit more surprising to hear about the amount of opposition and resistance they face from other teachers, it seems Malawi is, once you scratch the surface, not quite as Christian as the shop names and slogans on the back of buses would suggest. (On that subject, I saw one the other day that simply said, “IF ALL FAILS, TRY JESUS.” Really not sure about that one...)
Wood shopping – Once we’d said goodbye to the Emmanuel people and had some chips and a fanta it was time to start shopping. I had to buy a Chichewa bible, which was fun, and then a long list of building materials, which turned out to be such a large amount of actual stuff that we had to pay a kid with a wheelbarrow 200 kwacha to take it to the timber yard. Then we had some fun negotiating desperately with the timber sellers, hoping to convince them that despite my skin colour, I did not actually have infinite funds and was actually buying the wood for my school and not for me! In the end, by switching to low quality for some parts, and getting them to chop some planks in half on the crazy chopping machine, we managed to get the price down to something vaguely acceptable, and hired a big truck to take it all back to Chimbowe. Had a great moment of feeling horribly naive when Brian said, “That is all of the wood, let’s get into the vehicle” and I said, “But we need to pay these guys for the wood,” and he said, “Yes. That is why we need to get into the vehicle.” And I looked around at the huge numbers of piece working men standing around and felt the big lump of cash in my pocket (since 1000 kwacha is the biggest note the money for the wood was actually far too much to fit in my wallet) and decided that his plan was eminently sensible. The whole process was somehow thoroughly exhausting, but we made it in the end.
Homecoming – We arrived under the cover of darkness, and got the lorry to pull up outside Standard 7 (the only classroom with a door), only wincing slightly when it ran over some bricks that are supposed to mark a flower bed. When I got out I saw Mike cooking on our porch, and on going inside I discovered that something very strange had happened. The kitchen table had been rotated 90 degrees, it was completely empty except for a few bags of clothes, and the shelves were stuffed wildly with the huge mound of rubbish and books that had been on it. Next to it in the main room was a pile of bags, including both our suitcases. I looked into my room. The mosquito net had been tied up, and the curtain was drawn – I never do either of these things. Then I looked again and realised that the bed had somehow been turned 180 degrees. I am still unsure how this was possible considering that the bed is only about 2 feet smaller then the room in either direction! It turns out they had, for the second or maybe third time, re-floored the hut. This involves taking literally everything out, and then smearing new mud+something mixture over the floor, letting it dry and then moving everything back in. The floor was much improved, and the effort much appreciated.
Evening entertainments – Mike was in a surprisingly good mood considering that he had taught Brian’s class all day, then gone to teach our 3 classes at the secondary school, and had done all of this while pretty ill – a dizzy spell in the middle of Tuesday night had led him to accidentally kick our toilet roll down the toilet hole, sad times. Anyway, he had cooked our food and we ate well, then finished watching ‘Rock of Ages’ on my laptop (he had started it in the day) and rounded the evening off with some Chokkits. Mike had sent me to Kasungu with money to buy these – they are the best biscuits available in Malawi by a long way, made in South Africa – a kind of coconut crunchy sandwich cream chocolate biscuit. Exceptional. It was, however, quite strange buying them in front of Brian – it is very hard to justify the 1200 kwacha a packet costs (that’s £2, or more bananas than you can carry).
Bed time – Then I went outside, as I do every night, to brush my teeth under the stars. This is such a glorious way to end the day that I’m considering maintaining the habit at home. Then I went back inside, saw a massive spider on the wall and failed to squish it with my flip-flop, went out to the toilet and was beset by flies. I attempted a stroke of evil-genius by putting the torch down pointing towards a spider’s web, hoping they would follow the light and be trapped. Sadly, they were either too smart or too strong for this scheme, but I suppose you win some and you lose some. So then I washed my hands with our new pot of ‘Handi Kleen’ hand sanitizer, and went outside to have a pray, and look at the stars, and write down what I’d done that day.
Wakey wakey - I got up as normal at 5.45am, got myself ready, and then waited for Brian to finish his bath (this is impressive by the way, because it is VERY cold these days at 6 in the morning to have a bath outside just by throwing hot water over yourself!) and together we headed out to the road.
Transport – We managed to hitch a lift almost as soon as we got to the road which was beautiful, it was a bit full of tobacco and babies so Brian found himself doing some athletic repositioning as we went along, which reminded me very vividly of people in action films doing daring deeds in car chases! Our luck run out at Wimbe however, where the truck stopped, then turned around, went back half a kilometre, stopped again, and what seemed like the whole body of passengers got out to talk to a man in a fluorescent police jacket. We then went back the half a kilometre to where we were before and waited for about an hour as the driver gave a statement to the police in their (3x4 metre) office building. It turned out that the truck had recently left a man unconscious in ‘hospital’ in Chamama – the other truck drivers of Chamama had accused the driver of running the man over, but his story was that he had tried to jump up and pull someone off the back while it was still moving, and had ended up falling off and hitting his head on a nasty looking metal bar that stuck out at the back. Traffic safety in rural Malawi is genuinely terrifying at times. On a much more trivial note, the wait was improved greatly by the range of African cakes available across the road – zitumbua with bananas, very well cooked mandasi, and gloriously moist zigumu. I had quite a lot of cake for breakfast.
Emmanuel Teacher Training College – Eventually we arrived and met some of the alumni of Emmanuel Teacher Training College, which seems to me to be an awesome project. The college train really good teachers, and also grow them in their faith, and equip them to run bible clubs for their kids. Once they’ve left, the college do a great job of helping them out – my favourite part of this being the offer of subsidised bicycles, which led to Brian getting, for a third of market price, a Royal Mail bike – from STRATFORD UPON AVON! Exciting times. Anyway, his mates were lovely, and it was encouraging to hear that a few of them actually are running Bible clubs at school. It was a bit more surprising to hear about the amount of opposition and resistance they face from other teachers, it seems Malawi is, once you scratch the surface, not quite as Christian as the shop names and slogans on the back of buses would suggest. (On that subject, I saw one the other day that simply said, “IF ALL FAILS, TRY JESUS.” Really not sure about that one...)
Wood shopping – Once we’d said goodbye to the Emmanuel people and had some chips and a fanta it was time to start shopping. I had to buy a Chichewa bible, which was fun, and then a long list of building materials, which turned out to be such a large amount of actual stuff that we had to pay a kid with a wheelbarrow 200 kwacha to take it to the timber yard. Then we had some fun negotiating desperately with the timber sellers, hoping to convince them that despite my skin colour, I did not actually have infinite funds and was actually buying the wood for my school and not for me! In the end, by switching to low quality for some parts, and getting them to chop some planks in half on the crazy chopping machine, we managed to get the price down to something vaguely acceptable, and hired a big truck to take it all back to Chimbowe. Had a great moment of feeling horribly naive when Brian said, “That is all of the wood, let’s get into the vehicle” and I said, “But we need to pay these guys for the wood,” and he said, “Yes. That is why we need to get into the vehicle.” And I looked around at the huge numbers of piece working men standing around and felt the big lump of cash in my pocket (since 1000 kwacha is the biggest note the money for the wood was actually far too much to fit in my wallet) and decided that his plan was eminently sensible. The whole process was somehow thoroughly exhausting, but we made it in the end.
Homecoming – We arrived under the cover of darkness, and got the lorry to pull up outside Standard 7 (the only classroom with a door), only wincing slightly when it ran over some bricks that are supposed to mark a flower bed. When I got out I saw Mike cooking on our porch, and on going inside I discovered that something very strange had happened. The kitchen table had been rotated 90 degrees, it was completely empty except for a few bags of clothes, and the shelves were stuffed wildly with the huge mound of rubbish and books that had been on it. Next to it in the main room was a pile of bags, including both our suitcases. I looked into my room. The mosquito net had been tied up, and the curtain was drawn – I never do either of these things. Then I looked again and realised that the bed had somehow been turned 180 degrees. I am still unsure how this was possible considering that the bed is only about 2 feet smaller then the room in either direction! It turns out they had, for the second or maybe third time, re-floored the hut. This involves taking literally everything out, and then smearing new mud+something mixture over the floor, letting it dry and then moving everything back in. The floor was much improved, and the effort much appreciated.
Evening entertainments – Mike was in a surprisingly good mood considering that he had taught Brian’s class all day, then gone to teach our 3 classes at the secondary school, and had done all of this while pretty ill – a dizzy spell in the middle of Tuesday night had led him to accidentally kick our toilet roll down the toilet hole, sad times. Anyway, he had cooked our food and we ate well, then finished watching ‘Rock of Ages’ on my laptop (he had started it in the day) and rounded the evening off with some Chokkits. Mike had sent me to Kasungu with money to buy these – they are the best biscuits available in Malawi by a long way, made in South Africa – a kind of coconut crunchy sandwich cream chocolate biscuit. Exceptional. It was, however, quite strange buying them in front of Brian – it is very hard to justify the 1200 kwacha a packet costs (that’s £2, or more bananas than you can carry).
Bed time – Then I went outside, as I do every night, to brush my teeth under the stars. This is such a glorious way to end the day that I’m considering maintaining the habit at home. Then I went back inside, saw a massive spider on the wall and failed to squish it with my flip-flop, went out to the toilet and was beset by flies. I attempted a stroke of evil-genius by putting the torch down pointing towards a spider’s web, hoping they would follow the light and be trapped. Sadly, they were either too smart or too strong for this scheme, but I suppose you win some and you lose some. So then I washed my hands with our new pot of ‘Handi Kleen’ hand sanitizer, and went outside to have a pray, and look at the stars, and write down what I’d done that day.
Basically, life here is getting hectic these days and it’s
brilliant. I’ve found myself saying sentences over and over again this weekend
that start “I love...”. “I love food!” “I love this place!” “I love people!” and
a lot of more specific and obscure ones that I can’t remember any more. In
fact, now I think about it it’s quite often, “I love you mate”. That’s probably
my favourite.
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