Moving into my house!

Well I have been in Malawi for over 3 months and I have finally moved into my new house. It is a nice abode with two-tone paint – blue on the bottom half and cream on the top – I am officially living in a fish tank (I even bought material with fishes all over it for my curtains!!). My house is very hot during the day as I have a tin roof – like most houses in Malawi but I don’t have a ceiling as the roof it to low. The first thing I bought was a fan!

I also bought some plain material to drape across the roof to sort of act as a ceilingish! My DIY skills were very impressive with a hammer and a few nails and balancing on a chest of drawers. Don’t worry I had a chair to stand on when climbing down. Safety first of course. Unfortunately, I forgot that the chair was made in Malawi and on my way down I put my foot on the chair and it went straight though!! I went flying onto the bed, floor and my new fan which cracked – fortunately it was also made in Malawi and so poorly made that it survived the fall and still works – just at a slightly odd angle!! A week later and I still have yellow bruises all down my leg and ankle!

Wildlife

I also had a plague of ants roaming about the house! There are so many sprays on the market that I had great fun ‘dooming’ them all!! Thankfully most are just little but still pretty annoying. My house also had few other nests. Malawi has these weird black bee/dragonfly type creatures that hover about. The make little nests out of dirt. Of course I had one inside the house and their main nest (like wasps) outside on the roof! I of course got stung by one on the arm – my god it was painful, quite like having an injection permanently for half an hour. Thankfully some kids must have seem me get attacked and when I came back from work they had knocked it down with maize stalks. My night watch man also removed the inside nest with a broom. It was full of huge maggots!

I have also had a few cockroaches lying about – they are really awful, pointless creatures who wake me up in the night with their scuffling!

I also have a lack of furniture. I was supposed to get furniture from the previous education volunteer as we are funded by DFID so they provide furniture. He left last September and another non-funded volunteer moved into his house with the agreement that I would get the furniture when I arrived. Of course no one actually made note of what was DFID furniture so all I got was a bed, a few chairs (yes the ones that you can’t actually sit on for fear of falling through them), a table and one bit of a sofa set, oh not forgetting the chest of drawers. Thankfully Sue has lent me some of her garden furniture until I get some made! Cardboard boxes also make great tables when turned upside down and covered with material.

I had fun decorating my house with photos from home, cards that people have sent me and stuff from Malawi – yes I am still spending like there is no tomorrow and I will never survive on the volunteer wage alone!!! I suppose I did splash out on an oven with was a weeks allowance worth!! Totally worth it to bake, then burn cakes!!! Apart from cakes I am actually making a few good things, like fajhitas totally from scratch, lots of pasta and of course every dish has to have tomatoes in it – they are really cheap and then most available thing along with onions!! I manage to stock up on essentials like cheese and chocolate when we go to Mzuzu – but prezzies through the post are most welcome. They seem to arrive ok, especially if they are sent recorded or have ‘Jesus is love’ etc all over them!!

Anyway – busy week this week – with computer training and exchange visits I am finally doing some good work!!

Caz xx