My life so far

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Note: Get a cup of tea and some biscuits before you read any further as it is a very long entry!!



This week has gone quite slowly. It feels like I have been here 2 months not 2 weeks! But in a very good way.

I have met some interesting animals (some scary, some gross and some nice from a distance!) they include: 2 scorpions(both killed by me), one green scary snake that was poisonous (Maryanne cut its tail off and it slithered away) 2 cockroaches that were really big and red (I tried to kill them but they ran away too fast ewww) a very hairy caterpillar that will make you itch if you touch it, it moves quite fast for a caterpillar. (Mr Bander took it away with a dust pan and brush). A family of monkeys crossing the road near the house (it was like deer crossing the road in the English countryside but with monkeys) and some bright yellow canaries flying around the car and singing in the trees! (Very sweet). There are some big horrible flies in the garden here, they bite through clothes and give you sleeping sickness ( I got bitten by one one and it stung like an aggressive horse-fly and that was through my top). We have lots of pets here including 3 dogs, one of them is a cute puppy called Shadow, she has been quite ill 😞 a big dog called Chase who we took up the mountain and a smaller gingerish dog called Chicken, who we think we took up the mountain. We also have a lovely yet randomly aggressive cat called Daisy who likes to catch and chase mice around the house and swipe at you, even if she is sitting on your lap! She has really sharp teeth. Although all these pets are lovely they do bring in these horrible insects called tics, they grab on to the fur and suck the blood, they are black and quite small (they can last up to 10 years without any blood!)



So other than seeing lots of animals, I also went to the Lake last Saturday (1st Jan) which was a blast! (although I got a tad bit sunburnt). Jessica came with us, who is lovely, but I'm sure I have already said that. She is home schooling an 8 year old who lives near kindle out reach centre, near the farm. She has been here for 4 months and is staying for another 5, she was thinking about studying English Lit. or American Lit. when she goes to Uni. This is her gap year and she is loving it. She lives by herself in the guest house and enjoys reading whoop whoop (except she doesn't like Harry Potter!!! I am still shocked). She also doesn't know of Doctor Who (but as she is German I am willing to let that one go). Jessica also goes to the Bible study she has interesting thoughts and ideas about it all. Well I think that's everything about her.



At the lake we met up with another girl Lacy who is a nurse from Texas. She is 23 and is also really lovely. She is working at the clinic and hospital in Salima. She has also been here 4 months but staying for at least another year! She likes working here but is living with a traditional Malawian family, who are quite controlling and judgemental about certain aspects of her life. They don't like the Lake and they don't want her to go there! Its a bit crazy. Other than that she likes it here and she has found a lovely place to live in Salima town. She will come to the Bible study in a few weeks after she has settled into the new place!



We also met up with another woman Thia who is Dutch, who is probably in her early 30's, she is a doctor at another hospital on the outskirts of Salima, this is her 3rd week and is staying indefinitely I think. She took over from her friend who is also Dutch, she left 4 weeks ago so I never met her. Thia had her 1st proper week at the hospital and I think she found it quite hard as lots of people die who could easily be saved but the doctors don't want to be accused of witch-craft so they leave them be. I cannot imagine working in those conditions!! She is also single and living alone in Salima. She came to the Bible study this week and said that she really enjoyed it. She will hopefully be coming next week as well.



When we were having lunch at the Lake we bumped into some of our neighbours who were out on their speed boat, they very kindly invited us along, as well as some other guys from America who were kind of there with us but on another table. This was a blast, we went really fast around Lizard Island and saw the other side of Senga Bay where there are baboons who steal your food and scare the children. On Lizard Island there is a really small lighthouse on the Island that was almost impossible to see. We were on the boat for about 15 mins seeing lots of Senga Bay and trying to talk to the Americans but it was very windy and loud so we couldn't talk that well.





When we got back to the beach Lacy and I went swimming in the lake, it was really refreshing and lovely, the water was transparent and beautiful. We talked about living here and what to do for fun, for example what to do in Lilongwe and Salima. We also talked about beer and how much we missed wine.... She said next time she goes to Lilongway she will get me some :D YAY! Back on the beach Jessica and Lacy talked about what brought them here while I played with Daniel in the sand and tried to listen to their conversation, which didn't really work. Later on the Americans came to see us after they had eaten and we talked again about what we were all doing here and how long, (we talked about the same things on the boat but this this time we could all hear each other) They are all doctors doing their Residencies and are here for 3 weeks to boost their CV and to see the differences between here and there. They were all interesting and fun.



We met Thia the Dutch woman at the pool and heard about what her friend and her are doing here, she is taking over from her friend. They are both doctors working at a hospital trying to break the barriers to get better health care and support to the patients. It sounds rewarding but very hard work. (I don't have a picture of her yet). She went swimming with Daniel, Amara and Marryanne in the Lake and when they came back we left to go home as it was getting quite late.



On Sunday I went to the local church here, the whole service was in Chichewa so the only words I understood were Amen, Hallelujah and Thank you. I could just about sing along with some of the songs as we had a song book (in Chichewa). This was an interesting experience and quite fun in a strange way. I took some pictures and from where we were sitting we could hear the Sunday school in the garden under a tree playing games. The one strange thing about this church is the fact that men and women sit on opposite sides of the room on very unstable benches. I liked the way the service was laid out as we had singing, talking, praying, singing, talking praying ect... this did go on for 3 hours though. And we left early.



On the Monday I didn't feel too well, I went to the nursery but didn't do that much, just some singing and a quick lesson before lunch time. During break and lunch I found the Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes so I sat in and started to read it. It was brilliant! But other than this nothing exciting happened.



On Tuesday I was feeling too ill to go into the nursery so I stayed at home with Amara and Marryanne, Amara had a really bad cough and wasn't her usual bubbly self. It was quite fun, we watched lots of kids t.v and I read 2 and a half books on my kindle, One of which was a Doctor Who book about 11, The Ponds and featuring the Weeping Angels scary stuff even in book form, it was really good and I read it in about an hour. This is a great way for me to get my Doctor Who fix every now and then, without having to wait for the very slow internet! YAY!!



On Wednesday we all went back to the nursery and I did a very fun lesson with balloons, on each balloon I had a number from 0-10 with the right amount of dots and gave each balloon to a child, then I asked them what number they had and where will they go in the line. It worked quite well, there was lots of shouting and I almost lost my voice! But the children enjoyed it and they all took turns in holding the balloon and checking if the number-line was correct. Some of the balloons popped but luckily it was 0 and 10 so we had a number-line that went from 1-9 at the end. At lunch time the teachers said it was a good lesson and it showed me that not all the children know their numbers.



On Thursday I tried to do another lesson, this time with back-drawing. Where you trace a letter on someone's back with your finger. To make this work I needed to get everyone in pairs, which is a difficult task with over 40 kids in one room so I asked the teachers to help me but they didn't so I was left to do this by myself, I didn't get very far as I was explaining it to every pair. This took a very long time and once I had moved on to another pair the 1st pair sat down. So this lesson was a disaster and with 30 mins still to go I asked the teachers to help again and they just told everyone to sleep and then fell asleep themselves until it was lunch time. So that didn't work either.



On Friday Marryanne, Emmanuel, Shadow and I all went to Lilongwe. We went to the vet (it was someone's house) as Shadow was looking really thin and unhealthy, it turned out that she had a really horrible disease that effects the gut. She was given 3 injections and we were told that she should be better by Sunday. We left her there to be looked after and drove to the market, Emmanuel left us as he had to sort out his plane ticket to Nigeria. At the market Marryanne gave me the choice of going over a very rickety bridge or going another boring way, I choose the very rickety bridge of course! Once we had made it into the market we looked at shorts for Marryanne, and I had found a lovely skirt. While we were looking at things it suddenly started to seriously rain, there were lots of rivers and streams all of a sudden, we found shelter in an empty stool but realised that it was never going to stop raining. We had to run over the slippery mud and through the rivers to get back to the very rickety bridge (which was now exceedingly slippery) and swaying in the wind, over the very full and very fast flowing river below... Once we had finally crossed we had to run through more rivers and streams to get back to the car. When we were inside the windows steamed up and we changed into our new things (Marryanne brought some shorts) and dried ourselves with the towels that Shadow didn't use. The next challenge was to drive with the windows misted up (It was like driving in Sir Robin when his de-misters stopped working) but this time with very busy slippery muddy roads and lots of random pedestrians around. Thankfully we didn't kill anyone and found Emmanuel on the side of the road. He dropped us off to have lunch with Penny, a great friend of Marryanne's who lives in Lilongwe. We went to a lovely place and ate really well, Penny used to live near Kindle but moved to put her son in a better school. After lunch we went to the supermarket to get lots of things and some wine for me :D YAY!!!

We then went back to the market to buy fruit and veg (we didn't need to go over the very rickety bridge thank-goodness) and got bombarded with avocados and tomatoes, we found what we needed (and more) and got back to the car to drive to another friend of Marryanne called Pat who is from Belfast. She is pregnant and made brownies 😊 we talked about the elections, Uni's and other things that were interesting over a pot of Lady grey tea (I used to drink it at work in Henley so it brought back memories of the teenie tiny kitchen) Emmanuel called to be picked up (as we had the car) and had to leave Pam's. She is going back to Belfast to have the baby as she is only 16 weeks. On the way back home we had to pick up Shadow who was very happy to see us. The vet told us to give her lots of water every 2 hours over the next few days to flush out the disease. We drove home with Shadow in the boot again. Once at home we all ate and I fell asleep at 8:30.



On Saturday I woke up after a really weird and vivid dream about Henley and Emily and lots of random people who I knew but didn't know. I read a lot and downloaded some new books and started writing this. I went to Jessica's to see what she was up to and Thia invited us to go to Lilongwe on Sunday to go to church with her so we talked about that and about lots books and life here and things. We got onto the subject of fun and cooking and decided to bake cookies and have a girls night that evening after dinner. I had to go back as we had friends coming that afternoon.

It turned out that they couldn't come so I stayed home anyway to talk to Mum on Skype and do emails and things. After dinner I went to Jessica's with the beloved wine and lemons to make lemon cookies. At hers we made the cookie dough and chopped up some chocolate to make 2 batches of cookies 1 lemon and 1 chocolate While baking we listened to her collection of Malawian music and I tried to dance like a Malawian (it didn't look good). When they were in the oven I looked through her books and realised she has season 2 of Sherlock!!!!! YAYAYAY! I had a major freak-out and went a tad bit crazy for a while. Once I had calmed down we popped oven the wine and I found out that she hasn't seen season 3 yet aaaaa!! (so I have to close my trap) We quickly changed the subject and she showed me her home made calender that her mum made for her, as I showed her the lovely one that Emily made for me last time she was here. When the cookies were ready to eat we found them very yummy and lovely, we couldn't stop eating. When we looked at the time I went home as we had to leave really early the next day to get to church.



I was ready to go to Lilongwe before Jessica got here which has never happened before 😊 we walked down to kindle together to wait for Thia to pick us up. Wihile we were waiting we spoke to some Malawian boys who Jessica knows. When we got in the car one of Thia's friends who is from Scotland was in there to with lots of stuff as she was going to the airport after church. We didn't go to flood, we went to the City Baptist Church where Marryanne and Emmanuel got married. It was quite nice and very friendly. Everyone was dressed up wearing heals and short skirts, we all felt every under-dressed. After church (it was only 1hour 30mins) we went to the airport and dropped off Thia's friend, she is going to South Africa for a week to see some other people. We had to hurry back into town to get to the supermarket before it closes, we made it and I brought some cookie cutters as we used a glass for the other ones. Jessica and Thia had to buy a lot of stuff and once we had all finished we went over a very busy road and had a massive lunch, it was really filling and tasty. We were all too tired to do anything else so we jumped in the car and drove home. I fell asleep in the car (surprise surprise) and didn't wake up until we got back to kindle. Jessica and I walked home and Marryanne and Emmanuel had some friends over so I said hello to all of them and then went swimming with Jessica, we talked a lot about what she wanted to do at Uni as she has no idea any more. We talked about lots of random jobs and things but we haven't found a good one yet....



After dinner I went to see Madam Shone who owns the nursery I work at and talked to her for about an hour about all that I have done and my plans over the next 6 months and short plans as well, I think this was very promising and exciting and we are going to work together with trying to change it for the better. I hope all our plans will come out well.



Right well that was my last week, I hope you enjoyed it. I'm sorry it was so long I really hope you get to this bit as it is the end.



Thank you for reading it!! See you next time xxx

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Photos

On the boat
From left to right: Jessica, me, Lacy

Lizard Island
The view from the boat

Daniel on the boat
In the background is Marilyn, our neighbour

One of the Americans with Lacy
She is pointing at the lodge or the light house... I cannot remember

Jonathan driving the boat
With Marilyn in the background

The 1st scorpion I killed
I am very proud of this!

Inside the church
With women and men separate

The Sunday School
Playing a counting game

The Church
This is what it looks like from the outside

Church
A woman who didn't get a seat on woman's side