Last week

FOUND IT!
Hello again

I thought this time I would tell you about my week, which may or may not be very interesting to you. Up to you to decide. But I have to work backwards, as I've just realised I've forgotten most of it already. So ...

Today is Sunday and I still woke depressingly early, at 5.30, when it's still dark but dawn is coming, so off to the little room at the end of the garden. No more details, you'll be pleased about that. Back to bed. It wasn't even 6am and it is Sunday. An outrageous time to be awake. I heard Joyce (housekeeper) come in about 7 and start drawing water and sweeping. She's usually off on Sunday but took yesterday instead: something to do with collecting money owed to her shop. Breakfast was spread over about an hour: first an orange, then I decided to boil an egg on the pot over the charcoal fire in the yard. Not overly successful but never mind. Toast is good done like that though. Then I went to the library (a stone's throw from the house) to do lesson prep for tomorrow. I'll be teaching standard 8 from end of assembly for max of 2 hours or until I get fed up with them, then a short break and the most able 4 will benefit from my expertise. It'll be good as I actually have one book for each of them! Amazing. I do hope we'll make some progress. Talking of stone's throws, I took a class outside last week and had them throwing stones, to illustrate the meaning of the expression. I don't think I'd be allowed to do that at home.

Yesterday was a planned trip to Nkharta Bay, which is on the shores of Lake Malawi. Luckness, Anna, Mrs Banda (Headteacher's wife) and I went. We had planned to start at 10am. No chance. At 11 I went for a walk and met a Rasta called James who showed me his garden, with the pineapple plants, lemon tree ('just send a boy over to get some whenever you want' he said. Can you imagine trying that at home? Not since Dickens' day, I suspect) and also so huge things like giant pea pods or runner beans that keep snakes away. I hope they work. So off to Nkharta Bay at 11.30. We went to the beach, I sat on the sand and discussed politics with a beach trader, my friends sat demurely at a table and waited. Then we went to find some lunch and I am trying to be polite about this bit. It transpired that 2 of the party had brought no money at all with them. Not a bean. I wonder who they thought would be paying for them? Hmm. Then we went shopping for food - we have a small trading centre outside the school gates, but it's not much cop - and headed home. It's about 50 minutes, half of it on an ok tarmac road and the rest on 7km of dirt road leading to the school. I drive very carefully over that and won't do it at all when it's been raining as it becomes a skid pan.

The week was spent in lesson prep, teaching, sleeping, making a few bizarre local trips (the locals are always trying to treat me as a taxi service) and on Tuesday I went again to Mzuzu to extend my visa and to do some shopping. That's it really, my life in the bush. Some more people are coming next week, so it'll be interesting to see some new faces around here. The time is flying and I'll be back home before I know it.

I have just written a fairly long blog about my week and then the thing wouldn't publish it and it hasn't even saved it as a draft, so I am cross and send you my apologies for missing out again on my exciting life in the bush.

It was about my week, really, and can be sumarised as: yesterday (Sat.) went to the beach and did shopping, planned lessons and taught - got dismayed at standards over here, went to Mzuzu on Tues to extend visa and do shopping. If I find the blog I will publish it but don't have the heart to write it all again and then lose it.

xx

Domestic arrangements

Hello again and I just found this as a draft, so am sending it. Sorry if I repeat myself. Lucky you: 2 blogs in one day but still no photos!

You will recall I told you last time I have a housekeeper. Her name is Joyce, she is the same age as my eldest daughter, has 3 daughters of her own (like me) and her husband has disappeared. When I met her at the tea plantation house where I spent my first few nights after coming up north from Lilongwe, she would arrive about 6.30am, leave again at lunch time to look after her children, walk back to the house in the afternoon and then stay until it was dark - about 6 or so in the evening. Each trip took her one hour, so four hours walking to and from work. She doesn't do such long hours now: she arrives before 7am usually and leaves about 2pm, 6 days a week. She cleans my room, makes my bed (she does not approve at all of how I do it), washes my clothes, cooks my lunch and washes up and whatever else she can find to do. She does all this for about 10 GBP per week. I know there are millions of Joyces all over the world. But this is the one who concerns me.

This weekend - still awake very early, pottered around in the morning, eat my starch at lunch time but stayed awake for the afternoon, amazingly. Luckness, Anna (dep. head) and I went to the computer room (new additon to the school) and did some things there. Sat outside on a glorious day: it had rained and rained on Friday, but Sat was wonderful. In the evening I made myself a salad (see comments about starch - need to take charge of my own food once or twice a week at least) to Luckness' amazement, She thinks my tastes very odd. Anna and her children came round to watch Pirates of the Caribbean - the curse of the black pearl on a laptop in Luckness' sitting room. I've seen it about 2000 times so I just set it up and retired to my room. I heard lots of laughing - some of these children have never seen a traffic light, so the magic was extraordinary for them. And awake again at 4.30 on a Sunday morning, with not even  'The Archers' to listen to.

Love

Anne

 

Domestic arrangements

Dear readers

I have just spent ages composing a blog, tried to upload a photo for your amusement, and lost the blog and also the photo, effectively, as it took an unbelievable time to work. So I have abandoned the photo idea for today and am re-writing the blog which is, as you will see, about domestic arrangements here in Chisala village.

As I said previously, I live now on the school campus - all the teachers do, I think. They have single storey, brick built houses with 2 bedrooms inside and one in the outbuildings (where I am). The roofs are corrugated zinc, no ceilings (good, as nowhere for bats/rats to nest), concrete floors, solar power which is surprisingly weak, a back yard with the single tap and the outhouses at the far side of the yard.  We spend most of the time in the back yard, where we usually cook (I say we - I mean Joyce my housekeeper and Luckness, who I live with). I do the odd bit of toast, which I have to watch like a hawk as it burns in 3 seconds. The first time Luckness saw me making toast she asked me if bread tasted better if you cooked it like that. And I realised she'd never had toast before, or even seen it. Well, it's one of my staples here so long as we have bread.

I wake every day about 4.30am, the school night watchman bangs metal plates and cups and things together about 15 minutes later to wake us all up. Children start arriving for school about 6.30 and they sweep the surroundings. Luckness also sweeps. Joyce sweeps. I don't sweep. So much sweeping going on. This is followed by assembly and lessons kick off around 7.45 - always later than scheduled but This Is Africa (henceforth TIA). Joyce usually arrives by 7 and sets to, sorting out the washing up, washing my clothes, making my bed - I did do it once, but she was very disapproving of how I did it, so I now leave it to her. She prepares lunch for about 12 noon. She has a heart of gold, but she does like to fill me with starch. I'm not sure I would necessarily put potatoes with pasta .... then I just have to sleep! I usually work the afternoons, having become extra-curricular. School ends about 1pm, so my poor students have to hang around for me, which gives them a very long day.

It gets dark by 6.30 - Luckness and I eat leftovers from lunch (no fridge) or, failing that, we resort to cooking chips. We then heat up water (all on the charcoal fire in the yard) for our 'baths', which we take by mixing the hot water with cold in big bowls and carrying them into the bathroom, which is one of the outhouses and is a simple concrete room with a soakaway drain. But it all works well. I'm usually in bed around 8.30 and  sometimes I read or listen to music.Or sometimes I sleep off the starch again.

Goodbye for now in case I lose this one again! Will write soon and maybe photos if I can do it from Mzuzu later this week. Love to all.

First blog

I am so cross: I had written my first blog and saved it on a stick and can't for the life of me work out how to upload it. So I am rewriting it. It might just appear at some time in the future in a different form when I get someone to sort it for me.  However ...

So I arrived in Malawi nearly 3 weeks ago now. A pauper I might be, but I have influential friends and so spent my pre-flight time in a business lounge at Heathrow, eating all the food and drinking all the wine. The flight was not too bad as it wasn't full, but I was a bit concerned when we stopped to re-fuel at Lumbumbasha in Congo. Now, I'm not one of those who gets wobbly about 'Africa', as you might have guessed, but since meeting a woman who was lying on the ground with a gun to her head and whose life was subsequently traded for the smallest tin of Nescafe you can get, and this was in Congo, I am twitchy about that place. But it was ok. The problem was a bit more that I almost forgot to get off the plane at Lilongwe.

I spent the first two nights in Lilongwe and then went up to Tanya's plantation in the north, and pretty cold it was too. Then on the Sunday off to Mzuzu, the nearest town to where I live now, stopping off at the school where I now teach, and up to the tea plantation where I was to live. Only I didn't stay there as it was too remote for me and I moved down to the village where the school is. I live in a brick-built, single storey house and my room is a kind of outhouse in the back. We have one tap (cold) in the back yard and we usually cook over an open fire, but we do also have single ring gas burner. The pit latrine is out in the garden, ok unless it's 3am and the dogs are barking ...

I won't write much more in case this doesn't go and I have to re-do it. If it's successful, expect to hear again soon. Goodnight.

Before I go ...

I'm off to the north of Malawi in a couple of days to work in a primary school teaching English. I'll be there for a couple of months and hope to be a fairly regular blogger but, if my experiences in Sierra Leone are anything to go by, it might not be very easy to get internet access. I can but try.

It will be wonderful to be back in Africa and also wonderful to be away from this wintry weather in London. I'm going to be living in a house on a tea plantation. The amount of tea I drink, I've probably been keeping them in business for years.

The next time I write, I'll be there! I'm so excited and I can't wait.