Taking over the lodge

The first week we had no forks, but I suppose that was very Malawian, in a way. It was great waking up the first morning and walking through the empty building, finally its master!

The staff have been absolutely fantastic, and I hope they don’t think we’re too weird. We’re also getting used to their ways, and changing a few habits, I’m afraid. The first evening, Kenneth had the duty as night watchman, and we were trying to figure out what to do with the keys when locking up at night as we had cut down James’ ridiculous working hours so he wouldn’t be at work in the morning before Kenneth left.

James had just gone home, and Kenneth felt he needed his advice, so he shouted at him down the mountain, where James could hear him a few kilometres away.
- ‘WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH THE KEYS WHEN I KNOCK OFF IN THE MORNING?’
- ‘JUST LEAVE THEM ABOVE THE DOOR, THEN I KNOW WHERE TO FIND THEM WHEN I ARRIVE,’ James shouted back across the valley. Security certainly isn’t a big issue on the mountain; nevertheless, we found it best to change the system slightly...

These first few weeks, we’ve been working hard on the renovations, sanding windows, repairing door frames, holes in the walls and god knows what else. I’ve also started teaching James a few new recipes, and my mum is in full swing with the kitchen garden.

Lots to do and little time, but hopefully we’ll get there in the end. The official opening day is supposed to be 15th December, and I think we’ll make it, just. Next step is making furniture, which I hope we have enough time for, so we’ve started cutting up a couple of giant blue gums that the previous owner cut down in the garden. I reckon some disks from these trees will make nice table tops, but we’ll have to see if they crack.

Shopping

We’ve just come back from the shopping trip of our lives. Two weeks in Johannesburg, zooming up and down the highways between one soulless shopping mall after another. The South Africans love shopping malls, where you can buy anything from zebra biltong to spray-on mud (for those who like to look cool after a weekend pretending to be in the bush). We focused on slightly different things, though, as we have lots of mud and dust of our own.

The coolest purchase was a wind turbine which will supply us with enough power to run fridges, freezers, laptops, etc, and is more environmentally friendly and certainly cheaper than getting hooked up to mains electricity – Escom gave us a quote of an astonishing US $84,000, at which we smiled politely and walked out. And it’s nice to think that we now won’t have any bills to worry about: the wind and the spring on the mountain will supply us with everything we need.

We also managed to get all our white goods, and a load of beautiful fabric for curtains, cushions, bed covers and the like, while the African Crafts Market supplied us with some great camel-hair Algerian rugs and Congolese wall hangings. Now we just need the local pottery lady to makes us some pots, and a few Malawian carvings. It’s nice to begin to be able to picture how the lodge will look.

On Tuesday the lodge is ours [ed: this was written a week ago]. I can’t wait to get started on the work. Though we’re starting out with borrowed pillows and a camping stove, I’m sure we’ll get it kicked into shape before too long; we’re hoping to open up in mid-December. Bookings taken now for Christmas!

A Malawian Week

Monday: We drove up to Ntchisi town, where we had a few appointments before going the rest of the way to the lodge. We were supposed to meet the local director of the electricity company, and to look at a truck for sale. Neither of them showed up. We went to the lodge and spent the afternoon taking measurements for new windows. Had a nice evening in front of the fireplace with a glass of wine.

Tuesday: We tested the cob oven with its first lot of home-baked buns, and they came out really well. We enjoyed the hot buns with jam and peanut butter with the staff. Also went to test our home-made solar heater for hot water. It was leaking last time we were there, so we covered it in silicone and left it to dry. But when we tried to move it back into the sun, the silicone broke off, and we were back at square one. However, the water that leaked out of the other side of the solar heater was significantly warmer than that which went into it, so at least that means it’s partially working. We were waiting for Jean to show up in the evening to talk to her about payment for the lodge, but she didn’t come.

Wednesday: Packed up and went to Ntchisi town to meet the electricity director again. He wasn’t there. Outside the office, there was a guy selling small, sparrow-sized birds (shaft-tailed wydahs – we looked them up) for eating. He said they were delicious. I’d like to try them – they eat sparrows in France as well after all. Got to Lilongwe at lunch-time, where we met Obey, our mechanic friend from Ntchisi. He took us to the army barracks to look at a truck for sale, a strange and slightly scary place. We met the Brigadier General, a very friendly semi-retired old guy who had been in the army for the last forty years His truck looked good and the price was reasonable so we told him we’d be back the next morning.

Thursday: Went back to the barracks to close the deal with the Brigadier General. Then went to the National Road Traffic offices to get the paperwork done – change of ownership, renewal of licence, roadworthiness certificate, etc. Spent the whole rest of the day sat there in the heat waiting. In the evening went to a bar in town where we’d been told the owners were big fans of Ntchisi and had wanted to buy it but only found out too late it was for sale. Spoke to the wife, Scottish, who was really nice; sounds like they’ll be regular customers.

Friday: Back at Road Traffic offices. Spent the whole day there waiting in the heat. At lunch-time went to speak to a builder who’s given us a ridiculously high quote and told him so. He brought it down to half; we told him to think about it a bit more and ring us next week. Back to waiting at Road Traffic. Went briefly to the Ministry of Tourism at the end of the day to follow up on our application for a duty waiver for goods when we go shopping in South Africa in a few weeks’ time. Were told that we had to produce the exact prices and number of items we’d buy and that they had to fit with the receipts when we produced them at the border; otherwise we couldn’t get a duty waiver. How can you possibly know exactly what you will buy in South Africa and how much it costs before you actually go there and look in the shops? Were also told we needed a licence for tourism to go with the application (last time we went to check up, they told us we needed something entirely different), so we filled in the form. But unfortunately the guy who writes the receipts was out, so we couldn’t get a receipt. I refused to pay and left, will have to go back Monday. Had a take-away pizza and a few drinks in the bar and went to bed exhausted.

Saturday: Decided we needed a day off and I spent most of it reading some book about philosophy. Went out for dinner with a Danish couple we’ve met and had all in all a really nice, relaxing day.

Sunday: Wrote this, then looked through our accounts and various other spreadsheets. Started a new list for next week, which involves taking builders to the lodge, going to timber plantations to see if we can get wood for the new roof, chasing the duty application again, speaking to the tax authorities, etc, etc…

Building a cob oven

Day 1
The day started out sunny and on my walk around the garden just after sunrise I spotted a beautiful little Southern Collared Sunbird skipping from branch to branch in one of the wild plum trees. The weather was boding well for our first ever cob experiment, a bread-baking oven.

Kenneth told me it would be far too far for us to walk to the home of the local pottery lady. On quizzing him further, however, it turned out to be about two kilometres, and, despite the fact that a white lady obviously shouldn’t walk such an appalling distance on foot, we set off with the haggardy old wheelbarrow to fetch clay.

Only the pottery lady’s stoned old husband was at home, and it took a fair few ‘hello’s and ‘excuse me’s of increasing volume before he woke out of his drug-infused mid-morning slumber. Once awake and more or less functioning, and despite numerous interruptions of the giggles, he finally managed to show us around his compound.

His wife fetched the clay from a riverbed down the hill and worked up pots by hand before burning them on a fire behind the compound. His personal role in the household seemed confined to chamba-smoking and mid-morning and –afternoon naps.

I bought a large pot and his wife’s full stash of clay very cheaply for 500 kwacha, which produced another giggling attack before the old man happily collapsed on the stamped earth and returned to his previous occupation.

After lunch Christian and I started breaking down an old brick wall which is due to be pulled down anyway. Despite the midday sun, we made steady progress with our hammers and chisels, and within an hour we had enough recyclable bricks for our cob oven foundations. Most of them were of shockingly inferior quality, but they would serve their new purpose well enough. Meanwhile, the guys returned from the forest with bucketfuls of good, grainy sand.

Getting the guys involved in mixing cob mixing with their feet made for an entertaining afternoon, and I’m still not sure if they thought it was quite a normal thing to do or completely mad. But they seemed to take a keen interest in my cob-building book and the drawings of the oven that would soon rise from the earth.

We managed to finish the brickwork for the foundations on day 1, using cob as mortar (a touch I haven’t read about in the book, but we didn’t have any cement – I wonder if it will work). Tomorrow morning Kenneth will visit Father Chamba and get some more clay, which will hopefully be enough for the rest of the oven.

Day 2
Lefson is a very quiet man, especially in English. In fact I thought for a long time that he didn’t speak any English at all, and I used a translator whenever I spoke with him. But it soon turned out that his English is very good. During the cob building process, which clearly had caught his imagination by now, he would break his habitual silence and start asking lots of questions about the cob mix, how the oven would work, and whether we were really going to build our own house from this stuff. He’s a thorough guy and has shown a lot of care and interest in this project, which has been a real pleasure to see.

Kenneth arrived with more clay, and we all happily started mixing another load of cob from sand and clay and formed little balls that we used to build up the oven on top of my large half-ball of sand that would be used to hold the shape until the cob was dry. But when we were about to start mixing the outer layer – the straw-rich mix – I got a few doubting, even shocked, looks, and I’d clearly lost them for a bit.

I even started getting worried myself, for the straw we used was old thatch, with stems so thick and hard that they cut the hands and feet to shreds. And the damn things wouldn’t mix with the clay. But the breakthrough came suddenly, after some tense, coordinated tarp-pulling, and we suddenly had a coherent and really strong mix. Everyone had come round, it seemed, from the looks on their faces.

We all had a coke – clearly not something they had experienced before from an employer either – and finished building up the oven with the last of the mix. Unfortunately we just fell short of cob mix, and I was most disappointed to have to leave our unfinished work for the day, but decided that a hot shower would be welcome. I had rarely been that dirty, and that’s saying something.

Perhaps it was fate, but the water was not yet hot at six o’clock, and I was impatiently circling the Rhodesian donkey to check on the fire under the hot water drum. It was starting to get cold as well, but my thorough coating of mud prevented me from putting on a jumper.

And then suddenly, as dusk was falling, Mika, our 14-year-old orphaned holiday helper, arrived with clay. Christian and I obviously jumped at it, and in our rush to get the mix finished while there was still a trace of light in the sky, we ended up smothered in clay from head to foot. The oven was soon completed by the aid of a couple of candles, and then we were so ready for the hot shower!

The big test
Before leaving Ntchisi and Christian going home to Denmark, we made a beautiful door for the cob oven from a half ‘slice’ of a tree trunk, with a home-made handle on it. But unfortunately we had to leave the cob oven to dry, until earlier this week when we came back to test it.

It had cracked a bit, both the inner and outer layers. I guess we must have put too much clay in the mix? I made a big deal out of the test with the staff and subsequently got really worried that the thing wouldn’t work. But after having the fire burning for a couple of hours, the oven seemed to stay hot nevertheless. The buns went in, and 20 minutes later we had beautiful hot rolls for everybody! All in all a successful first experiment.

Malawi Moods

On the odd day everybody becomes pessimistic. Then you see the poverty, the kids with extended bellies, the corruption and disorganisation in government, the incessant power cuts, the people who always want money from you for one thing or another, the so-called drivers on the roads who have bought their licences in a shop and endanger all the rest of us, the schools with no books, the bush fires and lack of understanding of the environment, the fact that everything takes forever to get done, the lack of blue cheese and decent red wine.

But 99 percent of days are good. Then you see the happy smiling faces that greet you everywhere you go, the people that take time to talk to each other and to greet strangers, the lack of stress, the beauty of flowers, birds, mountains and lakes, the kids jumping up and down with excitement when they wave to you as you drive past, the freedom to do anything you want in the world, the great weather, the bustling markets, the dancers in the villages who with their abilities could join any international circus, the wealth of projects and subjects to indulge in, from solar power to botany and oral literature.

Getting to know the neighbours

It was so nice coming back to Ntchisi. We spent the first few days talking to the staff at the lodge again. Reassuring them has been the most important aspect. Change and the unknown is always difficult, and we get the impression that they have been anxious about the future while we were in Europe.

We were gone for two months – a long time – and although we had prepared them for the length of our absence, they had started worrying we wouldn’t come back, that they wouldn’t have any jobs after the current owner left. So it was really nice to talk to everyone one-on-one and make them feel sure about what was going to happen.

We’ve also spent our short time meeting a few of the neighbours. Esten is one of our closest neighbours, an old man, now retired, who used to be a watchmaker and was trained in Switzerland. I’m sure he will turn out to be an interesting acquaintance. And he is supposedly a good Chichewa teacher, so we intend to approach him about that when we go back next week.

Yesterday we visited the local school in the village. It has 650 pupils, housed in sensible buildings, built by DfID three years ago, so the classrooms are better than most (they actually have walls and a roof that’s not leaking!). The Standard 1 kids did an impromptu song and dance for us and we joined in and, although it was a bit difficult keeping up with Frere Jacques in Chichewa, it was great fun.

We have set up a meeting with the local Village Headman and the Group Village Headman, who oversees the nearest five villages, for next week to introduce ourselves over a cup of tea. I’m sure it will be a pleasurable meeting and prove important to good relations with the village.

Back in Civilisation 2 (or: Burning the Witch)

Last weekend we had our Danish midsummer celebrations. The 23rd of June is called Skt Hans, after Saint John, because John is called Johannes in Scandinavia, abbreviated to Hans; and because 'saint' is written as 'sankt' and abbreviates to 'skt', despite actually translating to 'helgen'. With me thus far?

So. We celebrate Skt Hans (ie. Saint John) with a midsummer party on the 23rd. Despite the fact that midsummer is really two days earlier and Saint John’s birthday is actually a day later. Obvious, isn’t it?

In order to show our true Scandinavian religiosity, we celebrate the saint by burning a witch on a bonfire. Afterwards we eat sausages.

This year I made the witch out of old clothes, sticks and egg cups and decorated her with some of my mum’s old (and very red) lipstick. She was a good two metres tall and looked suitably above-it-all in her lipstick and her suffering as the flames started licking her legs, while we all stood around the fire drinking red wine and enjoying the sight.

After the witch and the wine, we moved onto sausages, bread baked on the fire, and whisky. We finished the evening by roaring like an elk outside our guests’ caravan so they woke up again.

Good old Scandinavian traditions!

Back in civilisation

I’m home for a few months while waiting to be able to take over the lodge. It’s very rare to have this amount of free time in one’s life, so I intend to enjoy it to the full. I’m testing recipes for the restaurant, doing funny google searches and going for bike rides in the Swedish countryside.

Arriving in the UK at first felt a bit weird. One weekend we went to Reading and had to change trains at Paddington. Thankfully I more or less managed to stand back from it all, yet you can’t help being taken in by all the stress surrounding you and taking part in these ridiculous games that are played out in train stations.

When the platform was announced, a horde of people, mainly business people in their suits and ties and expressionless faces, rallied towards the platform from all directions. The image must have been quite spectacular from above, this vast herd of humans forming a fan-like shape. Everybody was walking, never running – that would be breaking the rules of the game – but walking faster and faster, simultaneously keeping an eye on their competitors out of both corners of their eyes so as to make sure they didn’t get in front.

The expressionless faces slowly started betraying signs of stress, vicousness, greed and desperation at the thought of their rightful seat on the train being snatched away from them. The closer they got to the platform, the more the desperation set in. Old grannies were pushed out of the way, toddlers overturned. And still on the surface, everything was done according to the rules of British politeness, of betraying to emotion, no real desire to get that seat. Everyone was still walking. Noone started shouting or visibly pushing when the old granny created a queue in front of the train door because it took her a while to lift up her suitcase. But there was impatient shifting from one foot to another, demonstrable shuffling of attache cases, imagining that horror scenario of having to stand in the aisle while a smug, spotty teenager got the last seat. Heaven forbid.

The whole show lasted only a few minutes, yet it seemed that the middle-aged guy in the suit in front of me had gained an extra couple of grey hairs since I overtook him on the platform and put an elbow in his ribs. It’s good to be back in civilisation, though.

Pubic Hair Barber Was A Twit

(recent headline in The Nation)

Cheese!

This is one thing I sorely miss here in Malawi. Of course you can get it, but the variety is limited and painfully expensive. Friends at home know how I suffer under the lack of cheese. Some even send me regular emails with descriptions of the cheeses they are eating. Reading these emails elicit an amalgamation of extreme emotions from me, spanning the entire spectrum from orgasmic pleasure to torturous pain.

So here is my plan to remedy this tragedy:

Jean, the current owner of Ntchisi Forest Lodge (ie the lady from whom we have bought our new lodge) has a goat called Heidi. She is the biggest goat I have ever seen in my life. Don’t think Labrador size, think Saint Bernard coupled with buffalo, with a bit of giraffe thrown in for good measure.

Heidi has a very privileged life and is fed daily on bananas, apples (whole – she would frown at being offered a mere core), oats, potato peels and other such goodies, and she has free access to the entire house, from the sofa to the pantry. She is, in short, the Goat Godiva of Malawi. In return she produces five (yes five!) litres of milk a day.

Surprising as these facts may be to you, even more surprising is that this week, a billy goat was spotted near the coast of Lake Malawi that was even bigger than Heidi. Clearly being a family fond of large goats, Jean’s son bought Billy The Giant and is now the owner of the largest goat in the country.

This fortuitous event coincided with Heidi’s ‘time of the month’ (if it’s once a month for goats, I’m not quite sure). One thing is certain, she made her desires known by braying continuously all night and generally running around like a nutter, trying to attract attention to herself.

As you have probably guessed by now, she was well rewarded when she met the Big Guy. And this is where my grand plan comes in, for I have secured myself a few of the future offspring of Goat Godiva and Billy The Giant. Can you imagine any more suitable cheese-making candidates?

I’ve also come across this website, which will complete the Plan, with recipes of all the most necessary cheeses: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese.html. Soon, my life will be complete.

Life in the slow lane

A new survey was published today, claiming that the pace of life has increased by 10% in the last decade, as measured by how fast people walk in the world's major cities. Copenhagen was only second, making it one of the fastest paced places on the planet. I'm proud to say that Blantyre, Malawi came in last, after all other cities in the world. Yes indeed, life here is in the slow lane.

A new era

I hope I’m able to say it now, that I’m not tempting fate. But no, I can’t help it, it has to come out: we’ve bought our new lodge! We still need to sort out the last details with the government, but we now have a contract with the current owner of Ntchisi Forest Lodge.

Signing the agreement was a rather ‘African’ experience. After five months of negotiating (and waiting!), we met with the owner at another lodge by Lake Malawi and were seated in a cozy little grove of lemon trees with views over the lake in beautiful hand-carved chief’s chairs (a specialty of Malawi), and surrounded by noisy and curious – and increasingly daring (scarily so, considering the size of their canines) – baboons, who seemed quite interested in the negotiations taking place below them.

Even more social was the resident pet vervet monkey, who evidently aspired to become a lawyer as he tried to govern the proceedings. While the rest of us could finally begin to relax and feel satisfied with reaching an agreement, the vervet got so excited about the contract we were about to sign that he jumped onto the laptop and nearly deleted the whole thing! A bit too interfering for my liking, that monkey.

But, though it’s still hard to believe, we are now lodge owners! We officially take over Ntchisi Forest Lodge in October but will be spending a fair bit of time there in the meantime, starting renovations (which are sorely needed), replacing the roof and building a new house for ourselves, amongst other bits and bobs that need doing. And of course we’ll be doing trail clearing in the forest to create walking and mountain biking tracks. Oh, what a drag! (sense the sarcasm there?)

And so all the uncertainty and frustration comes to an end. Well, that is probably incredibly naïve, but at least we’ll now be faced with a different set of challenges, such as the green mambas we’ll find when removing the old roof, the termite-infested wood that most likely carries the building, and the bureaucracy involved in getting the final details settled about the necessary permits and licences to operate the lodge. But all that seems like a laugh now that we’ve got our lodge; it’s the fun bit ahead now.

An evening's entertainment!

I started reading a book on African insects. Apparently the praying mantis is called the ‘hottentot god’ in South Africa – both names derive from the way it lifts its front legs when it rests, as in an attitude of prayer. And then, of course, the female eats its mate, sometimes biting the head off and munching it even as copulation is in progress. Quite an interesting little fella. There are lots of them here, and I have grown quite fond of them. Not only because they are beneficial insects, some types eating caterpillars and others mosquitoes, but also because I had a particularly entertaining night with one of them recently.

I guess we all find ways of entertaining ourselves at the absence of TV, and on this particular night, there was a very large green praying mantis in the ceiling, which we observed hunting for a while near the ceiling light while we were having dinner on the verandah. There were also lots of little flies of some kind, and they were generally very slow, not reacting much if you touched them. So we pierced one of them with a toothpick and fed it to the mantis. This may be cruel, but it was very exciting when the mantis grabbed the toothpick with its two front legs and held it there until it had gnawed off the fly.

Now, I know you’re not supposed to feed animals in the wild; but somehow I feel a lot of these types of rules don’t apply to insects. Anyway, the mantis must have been very happy because this process was so entertaining that we carried on feeding it for quite a while. And indeed, it was there again the next night, our newly tamed pet and entertainer.

Impatience

It has been difficult sometimes, all the waiting. Here we are, in the middle of Africa, with no job, no home, and no idea about whether we will ever find the lodge we want to buy and be able to change our lives. Yet I am having a brilliant time. I had no idea it was possible to be so unstressed and so impatient at the same time. And here, of course, impatience is an illegitimate emotion. Not allowed.

It has been such a steep learning curve, both learning how things work and how to adapt to the culture here, the pace of life. The latter has probably been, still is, the most difficult - and also the most healthy.

Every now and then I still want to strangle somebody because they’re so bloody inefficient. And then, when my blood has stopped boiling, I realize how bloody inefficient my tantrums are, especially here where they seem to have no effect on people whatsoever, other than producing a certain amount of tutting.

There are no estate agents, no ‘for sale’ signs, lots of good and bad advice from other lodge owners. Now we just ring people up and ask ‘do you want to sell?’ and then it’s the waiting game. Waiting waiting waiting, full of uncertainty, not daring to hope, not being able to stop dreaming.

I think I have planned every little detail of our lodge by now, from the type of carrots in the kitchen garden, to the flavour of the muffins on the breakfast table, all we still need is an actual lodge. I'm getting better at controlling my lack of patience. But I do hope we will find somewhere soon!