Hello hello,
I'm back for another summer in Lilongwe, Malawi until mid-July. I arrived on Wednesday May 13th after the typical 26+ hour transit from North Carolina to Lilongwe. Packing always takes me longer than I think it will, and I ended up running errands until 11pm the night before, and just stayed up packing & puttering around until my 3am departure on Tuesday. In a way, totally wrecking my sense of time on the front end makes it easier to adjust to the new time zone.
It has been fun to get used to the daytime heat with chilly nights that are typical this time of the year (it's "winter" here, which is still warmer than a Maine summer). I've gotten back into playing ultimate frisbee with the pick-up league here on Thursdays and Sundays, which quickly made me realize that I'm not in the best sprinting shape. Unfortunately, the sun sets at 530pm here, not leaving much time for frisbee on Thursdays after work. Luckily, my boss is the one who organizes it so she allows us to leave early that day. I forgot about the early sunset and exactly how far the running loop I like was on my first day here and had the last half of my run mostly in the heavy twilight. It gets super dark here at night on the roads because many stretches of roads don't have streetlights, and while Lilongwe is the capital city, it's not a place that's permeated with light. Not good for running, in addition to the safety issues of being on your own here after the sun sets.
At around 8 or 9pm, the sweet scent of the Night Queen flowers, a potent form of jasmine that is sometimes too strong, trickles into the guesthouse common room. I get an unmistakable waft when I go past the plant to feed the dog each night, a sweet but geriatric animal named Mfumu (king). I tried to teach him to sit before getting his food, but his arthritis is too bad and I decided his calm standing and waiting for the food was good enough. I do miss my puppy Moose back in Chapel Hill!
And finally, I forgot the excitement that comes with the "how actually bruised is that banana?" game. I found a bunch of small bananas yesterday and was a bit skeptical, almost to the point of not buying them because all were quite brown on their undersides despite their green tinged stems. But they're a good breakfast & snack food, so I got them. This morning when I woke up, I decided to take the brownest banana of the bunch, just to get it out of the way...
I'm back for another summer in Lilongwe, Malawi until mid-July. I arrived on Wednesday May 13th after the typical 26+ hour transit from North Carolina to Lilongwe. Packing always takes me longer than I think it will, and I ended up running errands until 11pm the night before, and just stayed up packing & puttering around until my 3am departure on Tuesday. In a way, totally wrecking my sense of time on the front end makes it easier to adjust to the new time zone.
It has been fun to get used to the daytime heat with chilly nights that are typical this time of the year (it's "winter" here, which is still warmer than a Maine summer). I've gotten back into playing ultimate frisbee with the pick-up league here on Thursdays and Sundays, which quickly made me realize that I'm not in the best sprinting shape. Unfortunately, the sun sets at 530pm here, not leaving much time for frisbee on Thursdays after work. Luckily, my boss is the one who organizes it so she allows us to leave early that day. I forgot about the early sunset and exactly how far the running loop I like was on my first day here and had the last half of my run mostly in the heavy twilight. It gets super dark here at night on the roads because many stretches of roads don't have streetlights, and while Lilongwe is the capital city, it's not a place that's permeated with light. Not good for running, in addition to the safety issues of being on your own here after the sun sets.
At around 8 or 9pm, the sweet scent of the Night Queen flowers, a potent form of jasmine that is sometimes too strong, trickles into the guesthouse common room. I get an unmistakable waft when I go past the plant to feed the dog each night, a sweet but geriatric animal named Mfumu (king). I tried to teach him to sit before getting his food, but his arthritis is too bad and I decided his calm standing and waiting for the food was good enough. I do miss my puppy Moose back in Chapel Hill!
And finally, I forgot the excitement that comes with the "how actually bruised is that banana?" game. I found a bunch of small bananas yesterday and was a bit skeptical, almost to the point of not buying them because all were quite brown on their undersides despite their green tinged stems. But they're a good breakfast & snack food, so I got them. This morning when I woke up, I decided to take the brownest banana of the bunch, just to get it out of the way...
To my delight, it was practically unscathed:
I know this probably doesn't fall into the "exciting" category for most people, but I'm going to take it for the small joy it brings. The skins on the bananas here are certainly better at protecting the inside fruit from the insults they receive in transit than what we can buy in the US.
Mini-Chichewa lesson: the word for "danger" in Chichewa is "poopsya" or "poopsa". That is all.
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