Life in Malawi...so far

We've been here 4 days and are hoping to sleep through the night tonight.  Our bodies want to be awake during the night and asleep during the day.  The kids are sleeping fine but then they aren't old like us.  We have been having quite a few mosquitoes at night which doesn't help when you can't sleep. 

We are staying at the Assemblies of God compound in a very nice house—3 bedrooms, 2 baths and beautiful grounds including a basketball hoop.  We have all the modern amenities so we don't feel like we're roughing it too much.  Last night the power went out while we were eating but came on in less than an hour.  We are supposed to have a scheduled power outage tomorrow from 9am to 4 pm.  I'm sure a lot of the power outages won't be scheduled.

The house we are staying at is the home of missionaries who are currently on furlough through the end of June.  They have a man, Whiskas, who is the housekeeper for both houses on the property.  He works at the main house until 3 pm and then comes over to our house and works from 3 till 5 or 5:30.  The first day he was quite offended because all the dishes were done when he came over and I had started a load of laundry.  I was making some muffins so I just started putting the dishes in the sink and he washed them as fast as I dirtied them.  He then cleaned all the bathrooms and swept the floors.  I told him that we are used to cleaning up ourselves but he said that in Malawi they do the cleaning.  We agreed that I would leave the lunch dishes for him the next day.  He was much happier but mentioned that it really wasn't very many dishes.  He has been working for the Assemblies of God for 38 years and I can see why.

Nancy (ex director of Ministry of Hope) took me to the grocery store when we first arrived.  It cost me about MK22,000 ($160) for all the groceries. (The money is called kwacha and is represented by MK.  Currently, the exchange rate is 145 Kwacha to the dollar.) I did buy cheese and lunch meat which is pretty expensive. That also included 2 chickens and 5 lbs. of hamburger or minced as it is called here.  Today, (four days later) I went back to the store and spent ~$55.00 for more staples like produce, milk, bread, sugar, eggs and laundry soap—a small box of laundry soap was $6.50.  They have eliminated all the street vendors so you have to shop at the grocery store.  As you can see it is not an inexpensive place to buy food.  If you buy any canned goods, pasta, seasonings or anything that has to be imported it is very expensive. 

In case you were concerned about the kids adapting you don't need to.  We were at the crisis nursery today and they fed us lunch.  It consisted of nsima (corn porridge), fried greens, tomato and onion sauce and small fried fish.  The fish were about 5 inches long and were cooked whole—head and tail included.  All the kids dug in and then Sarah says, "Look Mom, the eyes popped out."  I was totally grossed out but the kids continued eating.  They dutifully pulled the head and tail off and proceeded to get the miniscule amount of meat off the bones.  When we finished a little boy about 3 walked up took one of the backbones and just put it in his mouth.  He then grabbed the head and popped that in his mouth too.  I'm expecting Andrew to do that the next time as he complained about how long it took to get the meat off the bones.  Why waste time, you know.