Why is it this hot? What have we done to deserve this?!

End of Week 6, the hottest week so far.

I really brought it on myself. When walking to work with Louise last week I actually said to her ‘You know, I was really worried about how I would cope with the heat here, but it hasn’t been too bad!’ The sun must have heard me and took it as a challenge because, apparently, this has been one of the hottest Octobers for a long time.

Last Sunday, Louise and I went to an English service at our local Catholic church. I had never been to a mass before, but Louise is actually Roman Catholic, so it was very different experience for her than me. The church itself was fairly opulent, quite a contrast with the fairly poor area that surrounds it. Louise told me the mass was almost exactly like the one she attends back home, if a bit less lively! I really want to go to a proper Chichewa service sometime this year, as its all singing and dancing and shouting ‘Hallelujah!’ 

You can't tell, but it was chucking it down.

We were then invited to a coffee morning at a nearby village by some other PT volunteers, which was great fun. There was cake, tea and coffee, and our first glimpse of Malawian rain! While the locals looked on in amusement, the azungus ran outside to exclaim over the first rain of the season. It was awesome.

The next day was Mothers’ Day – a national holiday. It gave us a chance to catch up on housework and washing that we’d usually do on a Sunday. Louise met some school boys, when she went out to buy bananas, who told her that on Mothers’ Day in Malawi the children cook the meals and clean the house while the mother sleeps! Sounds like a much better deal than a poxy card and flowers bought from Tesco.

We’ve been doing more teaching this week, as well as being taught more Chichewa by the kids. I also repaired a pair of jeans for a boy called Christopher to make him go to school. This boy is one of the smartest kids at TST, has near flawless English and goes to a private school – he’s only about 12 years old. He just wasn’t going to school and we just couldn’t understand it. We finally managed to get out of him that the other kids give him stick for wearing shorts and his jeans had recently torn right down the middle seam. We spoke to Edwin who told us that many of the children get bullied because they’re behind in class, or because they don’t have many clothes or any of the luxuries that the other kids have. It was really heart breaking to hear – I quite naively assumed that the kids love school, because it’s such a privilege here, and didn’t even think about how the other students treat them. It seems grossly unfair that these kids, who have been through so much, should be subjected to that. But that’s children for you.

The TST kids still treat us respectfully, but I’ve had to break up quite a few fights this week. Some of them will just flip out over the tiniest things and take forever to calm down – Millie says the heat is a major contributing factor. I’ve learnt that reasoning in Chichewa or English has no effect; I just hold on the one of them and attempt to wrestle the rocks out of their hands. They would never hit me, so I make an effective human shield.

We went out to Blantyre on Friday night with some other PT volunteers to Doogles, a bar and backpackers’ lodge that we stayed at when we first arrived in Malawi. It was such a laugh and I met some really nice people – we even went out for an Indian! We stayed over at Doogles that night and left around lunch the next day. Unfortunately this meant walking home at around 1.30pm, the absolute hottest time of day. It was insane.

I had severe trouble sleeping last night due to the heat and now I’m feeling rather ill and I have a killer headache. Luckily, I can just stay inside and veg today. I keep reminding myself that it could rain any day now and that the hottest time of year is drawing to a close. November promises to be much cooler and wetter – I cannot wait.

Not as many cockroaches this week – we decided to invest in Raid Max – Cockroach Specialist Killer. ‘Kills Cockroaches and the Eggs they Carry’ It’s fricking amazing. It really does kill them, rather than stunning them, and when we spray it around the places we see them coming from we find loads of dead cockroaches on the floor the next morning! We still use Doom on the ants though, it seems to work fine on smaller, less resilient, insects.

Aaaah, ma tête est mal. I’m going to extend my closing section to ‘Quotes and Anecdotes’ because some cute little things happened this week that don’t really fit easily into the above spiel.

TTFN, please send some of your abundant rain my way, ta.

Please ignore my face.

Quotes and Anecdotes

Madulitso (he must be about 15) sat down with us and taught us a load of useful Chichewa words, while we taught him the spelling of the English words that he only knew aurally. When he was teaching us things like face (mkhope) and eyes (maso, eye is diso), we were getting him to teach us the Chichewa for all the body parts in Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. When we got to toes, he couldn’t remember and went to ask Edwin who explained to us that there is no word for toes in Chichewa; they just say Fingers of the Feet. I thought this was the coolest thing ever.

In contrast to last week, when I made a child cry, this week there was a young child standing by the road, crying, as we walked home. She saw us and gave a timid wave. When I waved back, her face transformed into a face-spiltting grin.

Catriona: Are you going to school today?

Boy at TST who I’ve forgotten the name of: Yes.

Catriona: When does it start?

Boy at TST who I’ve forgotten the name of: Ten o’ clock.

Catriona: (checking phone) Look! It’s 10.09!

Boy at TST who I’ve forgotten the name of: Oh… NDAPITA! (Used like bye, literal meaning - I’m going)

Madulitso has an Arsenal bag to keep his school books in. I asked him if he supported Arsenal and he told me that actually supported Chelsea. He then tried to tell me something that sounded like ‘actuleeco’, which he wrote down first as ‘acileco’, then ‘athileco’. He was trying to say ‘Ashley Cole’.

I also totally forgot to mention – Zoe Salmon has been in my house! Blue Peter came to Malawi in 2006 for a Shoebiz Appeal and they came to visit Nama Simba! Not only do they have her signature in the visitor’s book, but this was back before the current nursery building was built and they used the building Louise and I now live in. ZOE SALMON WAS IN MY FRONT ROOM. Ah, my life is now complete.