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.

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.

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.