Byeeee

Off to Cape Town.

F x

Crates Continued

I should also have mentioned the following useful facts about Malawian crates:

One crate of greens = 10 pints of lager. Perfect party size (for students);

You can turn them on their end and sit on them whilst you drink their contents;

You can have mixed crates within the fanta family (e.g. 5 pineapple, 2 passion, 13 orange) but do not try to put a coca cola or two in there;

Similarly, ginger ale, tonic and soda water go together, but with nothing else (even if you offer to pay the price of a whole crate of the more expensive drink);

They stack beautifully - except Kuche crates, which are bigger (because Kuche Kuche comes in 500ml not 350ml bottles).

See: complicated. A and Enrico are planning some 'crate theory' paper. Reckon there's a Nobel prize for economics in there somewhere!
F x

Matrimony and Mangos

The mango season has started!

This is big news. Mangos are very very tasty and Malawians have been talking about them a LOT for months. Looking forward to much mango chutney, pickle, salad, etc etc. I can already report that the wee ones are better for not getting juice EVERYWHERE but leave horrible fibres in your teeth (knew I'd packed tooth floss for a reason...) Am told the more expensive 'pink blush' ones, not yet available in Blantyre, will already be harvested further north.

Hurray! To celebrate 4 years of marital bliss (ahem) we're off to the lake this avo for the weekend. Four years is fruit and flowers – no flowers yet (ahem) but am on a mission to buy lots and lots of fancy mangos up there and use as currency when back in BLT!

F x

PS – we spent our anniversary breakfast at a MM 'business breakfast' fund-raiser – the glamour and romance of standing in a dusty playground being fed fortified, sickly sweet porridge was almost too much! ;-)

Moving On

Andrew stopped doing paid work for Mary's Meals on Friday. It was a very difficult decision for him to move on, but it's time. He'll be working full time with Imani (the economists) now on all sorts of things broadly connected with trade.

The MM Malawi team had a football afternoon and send off party for him on Friday. I felt very lucky to be there; so proud of Andrew, so pleased to have these people as my friends. Andrea gave a wonderful speech and a bunch of the men performed some kind of hacka as they chanted 'wazza, wazza, wazza, ah ah ah!' and presented A with brilliant gifts. Pretty special.

Thank you to all of them. I hadn't fully realised until Friday just how big a part of both of our lives MM has been. We'll miss it, but we won't be that far away. Both of us back it completely as the best aid project we've seen. There is simply no good reason for children to go hungry and not have a basic eduction.

F x

How long 'till we have a go?

:-)

Chariots! (Vanilla Chariots - note tobacco truck)

Crates

It's high time I told you about a Malawian system that has a disproportionate impact on our lives: the crates system.

Beer, tonic & soft drinks all come in recyclable glass bottles. These bottles can be bought individually or in crates of 20. Either way, you have to pay a deposit for the bottle and/or the crate. So far, fair enough.

However, the rules around when you can pay the deposit in cash rather than the kind (i.e. by returning an empty bottle or crate) or when you can get your deposit back (e.g. by swapping three empty for two full) are actually beyond me. The most cross Malawians I have ever spoken to are the shop ladies who I'm trying to buy a bottle from without bringing an empty back; or who I'm trying to convince to deduct the MK800 deposit for the third crate I've returned from the cost of the two new, full, crates I'm trying to buy.

I mean, how are you supposed to get your first crate? (Davina lent us ours, we levered up and were then able to extend the favour to Enrico). What do you do when you lose a bottle? (You really try not to). What do you do at 10am when you need to go to the shop to get a fresh crate for the party and there is one un-drunk beer left? (you can guess.....).

This stuff is complicated and there is clearly big money it. Obviously there's money in it for Carlsberg (and its soft drinks local sub, SOBO) who happily exploit this eye watering barrier to entry. But MK800 for an empty crate is around three days wages for your average Malawian. So, crates are currency, a store of wealth and a status symbol.

We are currently a 6 crate family – even if we repay Davina her initial 1, this is too much for our bijoux hut. But I can't figure out how to downsize. It's all getting out of control. Phiri will have a windfall when we leave.

F x

ARGHHHH!!!

Ok, so it's happened. Big hairy tarantula looking spider thing crawling up my back and I didn't notice!!!!

Was changing for the gym and stranger had to say “erm, excuse me, but you have a erm spider on your back.” Obviously I jumped out my skin and it fell to the floor. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say this thing was about 6cm in diameter and about 4 cm deep (its legs bent up in that horrible arching way). It was brown and orange(ish) and hairy and even from 5'8'' away I could see its massive fangs!

BLUGHH!!! How did it get on me? How often has that happened without me knowing? What if it happens again? (I was just beginning to relax!)

The nice stranger actually had to say 'calm down, it's OK'.

Sob
F x

Ps – member of the Ivory Coast football team winked at me tho! :-)

Chariots

There are a lot of pick up trucks here in Malawi. They can be ridiculously full of people, but the back of them usually contains two or three dudes in blue overalls clinging on to a mound of furniture, corrugated iron, or heap of cement (once, a huge pile of broken glass).

Quite often said Malawian dudes will choose to stand up in the back, holding onto the rail above the driver's cabin and looking forward over the top and out onto the road ahead. The only reason we can see for doing this is for the sheer love of the ride and we think they look like riders on Roman chariots. So we play 'chariot spotting' when driving about town.

This is great fun. You can have solitaire chariots; synchronised chariots; sunset chariots; half naked chariots; or backwards chariots (but never women chariots). There will always be someone riding chariots somewhere. Except in the morning rush hour - it really seems to be a happy-to-be-going-home thing.

Hard to get pictures of, but will try.....
F x

The Odd One Out

So in french class this week we were doing an exercise on spotting the odd one out or 'l'intrus'. For example: which is the odd one out? plaire à ; aller bien à; déplaire à; or expliquer à?. On explaining what 'l'intrus' meant, le prof asked the class what was out of place in the classroom – quick as a flash one of the girls pointed at me and shouted 'Fiona!'.

Charming.

He'd meant himself (as the only male, a point he often refers to when highlighting diff grammar
points) and slightly nervously said 'yes, she is the only european, but that's not quite what I had in mind'. Not letting it go, one of the other girls suggested it was Waheta, the headscarf wearing muslim!

:-) Here's me thinking we're all the same really!

F x