Advertisement
Published: September 25th 2008
Edit Blog Post
The African sun is setting gently over the countryside. As the sun sets, the warmth of the light bathes the surrounds and the earth deepens in colour and bringing out beautiful rich burnt ochre. On some days the sun itself turns a deep, deep red. The colours of the evening are uniquely African. The landscape during the day is largely dusty brown punctuated by occasional bright colours of bougainvillea or jacaranda trees which are shedding their purple flowers onto the grounds around them.
Zomba is a quiet and small leafy green town in the south of Malawi. It has a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere. Our garden looks out towards the Zomba plateau and elsewhere around the town are hills of varying sizes. I’m lead to believe that on top of the plateau there is forest and a river with waterfalls and in the town there is a botanical garden but I have yet to visit either.
Almost everything is available for a price, either here or in the larger town of Blantyre about 1 hour away. We have electricity which fails at times and the electrics in the house are somewhat temperamental, but we have a friendly electrician at the hospital
who has been out once and comes again tomorrow to try and solve some of our difficulties. There is only one plug in each room which means we are constantly moving appliances around and keeping an eye to make sure the kettle has turned itself off and not melted.
VSO gave us a water filter, although some people assure us that water from the tap is safe to drink, none of us have risked it. I suffered from tummy troubles for a few days and was largely confined to bed rest (on and off) and have been extra careful with boiling the water and then filtering it - which is perhaps excessive. VSO also gave us a two hob electric panel to cook on, which we have supplemented, at vast expense, with a small oven. On our first night we all tried the hot water taps in vain and when no hot water came we resigned ourselves to cold water showers for our time here, but have discovered to our great delight that a random switch on the wall is an immersion and given the dusty days a hot bath feels like the greatest luxury. However over the last couple
of days we’ve come home to find that the water wasn’t flowing from the taps. Yesterday it seemed that the landlord had been accused of not paying his previous bill, but I had been given a copy of his receipt to show us that he was up to date. The water came back on mid evening, but it has happened again tonight. The electricity is intermittent and we’ve had a number of power cuts, but intermittent water is rather more problematic.
The fresh produce in the market is of excellent quality and full of flavour, much more so that that available at home in supermarkets. Of course it is all seasonal produce, currently avocados, tomatoes, onions and ‘Irish potatoes’ are widely available. There are also some small peppers and aubergines, fresh peas and some green beans and leafy spinach-like greens are around, although there are several varieties of those and I am none too sure which are good or how they differ. Small sweet bananas are available everywhere. The mangos are coming into season but are currently a bit small and slightly bitter….but I am told they’ll get very large and sweet - I can hardly wait; there is nothing
better than a fresh juicy mango…..
On the streets young men are walking around touting tiny boxes of strawberries which they have picked and brought down from the plateau where apparently they grow all year round, and although they are expensive they are good, there were even some blackberries around the other day. Eggs are also available, there are chickens everywhere and the common practice seems to be to buy many live ones and wring their necks as and when you need them. Fresh milk is available at a price in some shops, sometimes and I’ve even seen butter once, but the blue band margarine is ubiquitous.
The market sells a lot of varieties of dried fish and a few fresh, but I haven’t tried either. The meat from what I can tell is poor quality and when I’ve seen it cooked it is tough looking and gristly and often people appear to serve the bones and joints rather than the flesh itself. Which we also found in Lilongwe at our training, we were served fish head (and tail) stew more than once. One wonders where all the bodies have gone. (In fact one of our colleagues an Indian doctor
managed to convince a Nepalese waiter that he spied to make him a fish curry from the bodies which hadn’t been served, which we all discovered only later!) Dried Beans and pulses are widely available too in the market. Bread is available, although the other day there had been a shortage of flour and the bakery had nothing left to sell, but generally it is good and easily obtainable. It is harder to find something on the street which is ready to eat or drink for that matter. So we have been caught short a few times and only had dry rolls or bread for lunch. I with my dodgy stomach I feel like I have been on the carbohydrate only diet for several days, the anti-Atkins diet….
Although most of these things are available they are often from different shops or from the market, so it can be hard to pop into one place and find something you can make a sandwich with for example. Unless of course you want chicken bones and rice or chicken bones and chips in which case bob’s your uncle…. There is often nowhere for people to wash their hands and hygiene practices are
rudimentary. So certainly, for the time being, I shall be sticking to my vegetarianism, which in fact is not at all difficult.
The staple food here is something called ‘nsima’ (with a silent n) which is made from maize flour and water, and creates a glutinous semi solid substance when cooked up on an open fire or small metal stove; which people either eat alone or with a sauce from vegetables and probably rarely, meat. It is inoffensive but largely quite tasteless. It fills the stomach and with some flavour on top of it, it’s fine.
Local people are subsisting on extremely little money. We are being paid 48,000 Malawian Kwacha a month which is around £185. (Well we hope - there were some rumblings that there might be a glitch with that being government employees but we are keeping our fingers crossed). The hospital has provided us with a night guard and a day guard and they are paid 7,000K. That implies that it is unsafe, but there is no sense of threat around and much the opposite. As white people we are hugely conspicuous though and it is assumed that we have lots of money, which of course is true, even if we are feeling poor. So we are advised not to go out alone at night because of the potential for opportunist muggings, but no one has told us of any examples of this happening to anyone they know. I guess everyone I’ve met through VSO and other NGO’s stick to the advice, since it makes sense. We’re told than rather than protecting us the night guards are really a preventive measure, that the house would quickly become known as one which is unguarded if we didn’t have a guard. We also have a girl called Lonnie, who is coming in two mornings a week to do our washing and clean up a bit; which is rather wonderful. He is very sweet and incredibly beautiful and speaks great English, so that’s great.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 5; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0636s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Janie
non-member comment
fab fotos
Pennie your photos are wonderful! My favourites are the kids going to school - that inquisitiveness, curiousity, you've captured exactly - and the boiler room ;-) Wonderful prose too - where are the typos?! :-))) XXX