Cooking, Culture and Photos

My role here in Malawi has been cooking, meal planning, cleaning and food shopping. So today’s post is going to be dedicated to my life here. I do all these things at home as well but everything takes twice as long here because I have to work with less than favorable elements such as not being able to walk across the street to a fully stocked grocery store. I may not have running water for a good chunk of the day and in order to wash dishes (all by hand) one has to walk down to the outside kitchen to fill a five gallon bucket of water. Our stove is propane run so I don’t have to worry about the frequent power outages affecting my cooking thankfully! We also hired a former Bible student to come and help with the chores which allows me to have some time to go for a walk or do some batch baking while she does the dishes. We all love “Auntie” even Emma runs to her now and asks to be picked up. Emma doesn’t even ask Robby to pick her up! Having her in my life has me questioning how I will ever go back to life without her! Although at home I will have a dishwasher and reliable water to run it and do laundry! Some days if we haven’t had water for a while I will walk down to the kitchen and fill several buckets with water to go fill the washer and run it. I’m still pretty spoiled because I’m not washing the clothes by hand!! But the amount of clothes this family goes through… have you seen how dirty Emma and Nora get?

Malawian cooking is done almost exclusively outside. This makes sense because it’s over an open fire and it would heat up the house terribly! They build a fire and place three bricks or flat stones around the fire to balance the pots on. The diet here consists of a white maize based food called nsima. It’s a paste consistency and it is the main dish of lunch and dinner. The sides or “relish” consist of beans, greens, tomatoes cooked in oil, a soy based meat or a few times a week some meat. Rice is also eaten, mostly for special occasions. The saying here is you haven’t eaten if you don’t have nsima. They feel like no meal is complete without it. Most food is fairly bland seasonings are cooking oil and salt. Nora and Emma adore all Malawian food including the snacks of sugar cane, cooked dried maize kernels, boiled maize on the cob and mandasi which is a flour and yeast dough that is fried in large pots of oil over the open fire. Abby likes the food as well but she is older and a little more accustomed to variety. During boot camp we ate lunch and dinner with the students for a week and by the end Abby was asking to eat anything else, she didn’t care what as long as I cooked it. That was a first!

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Because the local diet is fairly limited the local shopping is also limited. Within walking distance is the market if I need fresh veggies, mostly tomatoes, cabbage or potatoes. But if we need more western food staples it’s time to drive! 30 min away is Salima where there are small grocery stores where I can get pre plucked frozen chicken and bread and most other essentials. If we want more luxury items like cheese yogurt, real butter, lunch meat or Cheerios then it’s time to go to the capital city two hours away. Here I can find pretty much anything I want including chocolate chips! The grocery stores are fairly westernized and easy to navigate. But like most things here I can never guarantee they will have what I want in stock. Some trips they don’t have the type of peanut butter I want or they are low in stock of milk. But I feel very lucky to have such access to an abundance of food. There is also a store here called “Game” that is supplied by Walmart and has a lot of household and recreational things, like swim mats! Prices can be high there especially for kids toys. A little cheap baby doll that would be maybe 10$ in the US is about 40$ at Game.

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Daily life is pretty laid back here, even if I feel like I never stop working! We wake up around 6:30 or 7am. We do breakfast and get dressed because we have morning chapel at 8am. On monday and Friday there are staff meetings so those days start a little earlier. After chapel I go in the house where I start a load of laundry if there is water. Because I am doing cloth diapers with Emma I do at least a load a day if not more. I take 30 min or more to have a quiet time and then start in on the dishes from the night before. I used to do them at night but the amount of gnats that are attracted to the kitchen lights and the water make it difficult. The girls go outside to play with Auntie Cathy until 11am and that gives me time to go for a walk myself or start baking. If I want to do a big baking batch it’s best to start early to avoid heating up the house. I have also worked on organizing the staff medical supply’s and weeding out the outdated meds. There are our finances to log and office work to help with. Then it’s time for lunch and rest inside for everyone. After lunch Cathy comes to clean. She washes windows, helps keep the bugs at bay and mops the floors. It’s necessary to do so much cleaning every day to keep the dirt and bugs away. My afternoons consist of making sure the kids are safe and not destroying things… Nora has already tried to wash the girls dorm floor with laundry soap and water as well as attempting to get live coals to start a cooking fire. She is my wild child and she is thriving here but I have to check frequently that she is still alive. I also have been working on removing all the hard water buildup in the bathroom and the kitchen. I always forget to take before pics but the tap water here is very salty and creates incredible build up in the sink, toilet and on the tile so I use vinegar and a scraper/razor blade to remove the brown salt buildup that makes everything look permanently dirty. After the days work it’s dinner and baths. Well pre bath showers and then bath because otherwise the bath would be mud. Then it’s bedtime! We tuck everyone in and cover them with mosquito nets.

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That’s the average day in my life. During boot camp I was able to make up the first aid kits for each team as well as teach a basic first aid class which was such a nice change. The hardest thing here is to feel like I am doing the same thing every day and not really making a difference. I knew before we left that my role on this trip was taking care of the house and the kids to allow Robby to do the plumbing and welding work. I have had many trips where I have been the one doing the hard satisfying work that has visible results but this trip is different. Even though I knew that and prepared for it I still find myself looking forward to being home in the US and being back at work and feeling useful! I am also homesick for my friends and family and church community at home. I miss being able to go to a store and find everything I need in one trip, I miss just going to the park with the girls and having green grass to sit on. I have to remind myself that God has a plan for me being here as well as for Robby.

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