INTERNET WON’T ALLOW PHOTO UPLOADS. So here’s an update family and friends. This is my home for the next few months; it’s basically an A-frame tin shack which is unbearably hot as the 30’C sun is on it from morning to night. It’s home to many lizards (some of which are huge – like a foot long) but they are my friends because they eat spiders and other insects - the windows have neither glass nor mosquito nets so the place is full of them too. It has an intermittent electricity supply, no running water nor a much needed fan. However it’s all mine which is great - so I don’t care! It also has an amazing view over the beach and Lake Malawi which is so beautifully clear! At night when the rummaging monkeys and the fighting dogs go to bed that’s all you can hear as you’re sweating in bed are the waves crashing on the beach below – awesome! The outside ‘shower’ and outside ‘toilet’ are a challenge to say the least. With the snakes and spiders around here you don’t want to close your eyes in the shower or sit with your pants down on the toilet for too long. There’s an old oil drum which is filled with water and a fire is lit beneath it – so we have hot water for a shower at night - I’ve taken to washing in the lake though. To ‘flush’ the toilet you simply throw down some leaves and ash and let nature do the rest – a great attraction for flies at least. We drink natural water sourced from the ground which comes out of a pipe with added ants; a great source of extra protein so I’ve taken to drinking ants nowadays. Sometimes the water fails to come out of the pipe at all so a few ants are a small price to pay to be able to drink. There’s about 7 other volunteers here (mainly Europeans, and the odd Ozzie) that are working on a number of projects from agriculture to construction. We’re all here for the same reason so everyone gets on pretty well. We are all located in these huts dotted around on the hill and there’s a communal, straw-roofed, decked area in the middle that overlooks the water. This is where we hang, chat, read, eat, drink, smoke etc (after all; this is the home of ‘Malawi Gold’). It is constantly so hot here so we kick off the day pretty early (up and out around 6:30 a.m.). Volunteering projects finish by about midday when the heat becomes too much and then we do a couple more hours late afternoon before we lose the light (being so close the equator every day has 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness – give or take half an hour – so it’s dark every night around 6pm). Tomorrow I get to go meet the kids for the first time so I’ll update you about that then. We have a school / youth club on site and the nursery is about a 20 minute walk into the village. The trails into the village above the lake are pretty dicey, especially at night. The village is typically Malawian; there’s a main street bursting with small, open front stores, street stalls and colourful characters. Of course there’s no paved road so everything from the trees to the buildings is covered in the orange dust of the soil that makes up the ground. It’s a busy fishing community and you can cross from here on a boat to Mozambique which is pretty cool. Internet service is irregular and bank machines in the village don’t work which I’m finding is pretty normal: technology kindly donated and installed by large, international organisations but then when something goes wrong there’s no longer anyone with the skills or knowledge to fix it. Overall I’m settling in well, love the location, met some good people, excited about meeting the little ones tomorrow and learning to live without mod cons such as windows and toilets. Not seen any snakes, lions, hippos or alligators as of yet but plenty of crazy-colour fish, monkeys and lizards. Lots of love
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 15:10:46 +0000
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