Feeling for Rain

Rain is something that you can feel from the smell that it is coming. And sometimes hours before it actually hits the ground at the place of your stay. Sometimes you can only smell it is raining in village nearby, but it doesn't necessarily reach Chilangoma.

But sometimes the smellis enough to clear the hot-hot air. Sometimes it only shows lightning, specially beautiful at night. Completely quiet, just flashes all over the sky in different colors. Specially useful when you need to run to toilet in the night-darkness :)

Yesterdays rain made the air look white, the strength it was hitting the ground with was so strong that the soil was in the air. Amazing. yeah, well, it also brought hundreds of bugs after rain. So we decided to spend the evening in the darknessas light would attract the animal farm immediately. We escaped from most of the beasts, just when lying in bed,we heard a very low buzzing and one enormous bug was flying around in our room. We were so happy that we had mosquito nets, pure heaven,otherwise we couldn't really sleep at all. Too many animals around. As Pri said- Sista, this is too much Africa!

Mulanje magic

It will probably be just a short description of my absolutely top moments here until now! Pri and I went to Mulanje Massif for 3 days and after that I have it so often in my head. It was so beautiful. One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. We climbed 1500 meters on the first day, later on it appeared that our guide took us up from the most difficult path and difficult it was. Very steep and rocky, but so amazingly beautiful that it haunts me. I willgo back for Christmas for 10 days to stay in one of the mountain huts, enjoy fire in fireplace, cooler climate and talks and walks with Pri. Away from work, away from college campus, away from towns, markets, to enjoy the peace and beauty of this mountain. If the weather allowes, I'd like to go to the top as well, 3002m, but it depends on rainfalls. If it is too heavy, it gets too slippery.

It was amazing how different is every single side of the massif. We passed tea plantations, grasslands, rocky plateus, forests, waterfalls etc. There is everything. It was like being in the movie Lion King. We named one piece land of Scar, one land of Hyenas and one Land of Simba and we were singing songs from that movie, passing all these places. And we had to face the fact that during that trip we were on the very bottom of the food-chain...as we stayed one extra day that we didn't calculate in and our last breakfast consisted of a tin of tuna for both and a glass of milk. Very nutritious. By evening we could only see food everywhere.

But we got back nicely and we are looking very much forward to go up for 10 days during Christmas.

Hakuna Banana

Everything shows that this is the best moto here you can have. We actually have named so many things according to situations here that when people out of DI squares talk to us, they might not understand at all. For example we have named a huge spider 40-Chirimba-Lunzu. Why? That is a good question and answer is there, but somewhat complicated. The minibusdrivers in Blantyre scream at the busstop where their bus is going and are quite agressive and fast to get people to enter their bus. Our direction here is most often Chirimba-Lunzu and the price to Chirimba is 40 kwacha. The price to Lunzu they don't really say. You just have to know, but when they try to catch customers they run around nervously and scream 40 Chirimba-Lunzu. And that spider acts exactly the same. Runs around like a headless chicken and never knows which is the best place to be. So that's how our big spider got the name. And probably not necessary to mention that we are a bit afraid of this creature as it is biiig and hairy and you can hear all over the campus when someone of us has met Chirimba-Lunzu in the toilet. Brrrrrrrr....

Then we loose electricity more often now which means limited possibilities to cook and our menu consists of bananas and as we are not racists,we have different kinds-green, yellow, red and black. The last ones, to be totally honest, is the last stage for all of them and we try to consume them before but sometimes you just get sick of this amount of bananas. Anyway, no electricity food is banana and the code to say that we don't have electricity is Hakuna Banana. It was really funny to receive a message from one of the DIs whowas in campus and I was in town. Just Hakuna Banana and I knew that we can't cook so I should bring bananas from town.

50 kwacha is known as Higway-Limbe. For similar reason as the spider...

And if you want to know what would be the best souvenir from Malawi, then I'm telling you- it is Priscilas TCE T-shirt! It all came in one size and it was terribly big for her. One of the field officers offered that he can make it smaller for her. And when she got it back, it was amazing! Orange T-shirt, cut shorter, sewed again with green thread and not straight- of course, not even close to straight. Try to remember the first time you were using sewing machine and remember the line? Now multiply the not so good result with 20 and you are close! Then the sleeves were just tied under arpmpit part and sewed together and then cut off, but a big "ball" still remaining under both arms and when she put it on, one sleeve was much shorter than the other one. Amazing piece of work!

Another story that always makes me laugh- Pri went to fundraise and in one company she was asked to wait and was offered a choice of Fanta or Coke while she was waiting. She said that she would like a Fanta and immediately she was told that sorry, but we don't have Fanta. Being a resident for some time already, she asked politely, what do you have? And the reply was "Sprite!"

That's how every single day offers you something to wonder about and to remain sane just keep in mind- don't get angry, get surprised!