The Heat!

Hello dears
I am not sure you realise what I mean when I say it is hot here: it is so hot the air feels as if it is blowing out of a red-hot heater. The sun feels as if it will give you third degree burns and it never cools down, even at night. We have cold showers throughout the day and the kids swim, even though there are biting things (invisible and unidentifiable) that leave them covered in red bites. I am in love with my little white fan - it is my most precious possession. I carry it into my office and blow it straight onto me at the desk, and I carry it back to our room at night and point it right over me, under the net. It has saved my life. But today the water pump has broken and there are no cold showers to be had. Will have to go to the pool at the lodge down the beach for a swim when the last guests have left after 3.
I don't usually go anywhere, because that would mean going out of this shady property into that dusty heat glare out there. But naturally I made an exception for the Monkey Bay market and went, alone, in the heat of the midday sun. I felt faint and when I saw myself after two hours of trawling the piles, in the mirror at the loo at the petrol station, I was a vile shade of puce. It was rather shattering! I splashed water all over me and emerged looking as if I had tried to drown myself under the tap. The Malawian attendants, with their usual impeccable politeness, merely smiled cheerily and said "you are most welcome" when I staggered out and thanked them from the bottom of my boiled heart.
(Unbelievably, I shopped in that heat for winter clothes for the Cape winter next year. I bought fleece pants and jackets and jerseys - I was a hero in my own bizarre tale.)
Not much going on here in the heat... Ed got a fever for 24 hours and we treated him for malaria but I don't think it was - Malawians all just nod sagely when anyone sickens at this time of year and say "it happens now. It is the lake." The mangoes are ripening slowly and we drink may many glasses of water all day.
We are heading off to the tea estate under Mulanje mountain in the beginning of November - it has an enormous plantation house, sleeps 10 and has huge shady trees and a lawn and a swimming pool! There are also all sorts of mountain streams to swim in. Can't wait. Have even booked for the factory tour (being a tea head, I think it is a necessary pilgrimage.) (Google Lujeri Lodge and then go green.)
Both islands are full now, but are empty for the few days we go away. Malawi has been full of young Poms who came for the Lake of Stars music festival - colonisers. They irritated us with their arrogance - sending beach boys to fetch kayaks for them with vague promises to pay when they returned and infesting our jetty and generally behaving as if Malawi never got its independence 50 years ago and this was their own personal playground replete with cheerful slaves - but perhaps that was just the thoughtlessness of youth interpreted by the cynicism of age (made worse by the irritation of intense heat) - drink more iced water, dear...
Everyone who comes through here gets all misty eyed telling me what an ideal environment this is for kids. It is and it isn't. It's hard for them - the lake makes them itch and there's nowhere to go to get out except for two places - Gecko Lounge for and ice cream, and Cap Mac Lodge for a swimming pool. That's it for outings, and they only happen once a week as the grownups are all working the rest of the time. It is quite a limited life compared with life in town, where you see many other kids and play at each others' houses and go out to see things like the harbour and the shops and various play parks and whatnot. Buj and Javi at least have a wider circle of friends because they speak Chichewa and have grown up here, but my chaps are pretty isolated with only Buj and Javi to play with. So it's very safe and there's the lake and it's a great experience, but they really want to go home. They remember everything about it - every place they went to, every toy that is waiting for them. Still,, they'll miss it all when they leave.So the plan is to always come back for a month or two during the Cape Winter - and maybe every second year to do Christmas here too (and if we can persuade family and friends to visit us then that would be heaven!)
Must go now - hear the boat chugging towards us full of guests coming off and others are on their way here. The dads are taking the kids to swim in the pool and I'll join them there later. (Damn the pump!)

Baby Jane and Edward Scissorhands

Think it's been a while since I last wrote and then it was a bit of a whine, I fear.
Have got over that negative patch and am merrily settled down to the daily business of life here in the tropics. It is fiendishly hot these days and we have cold showers before bed and then sleep with fans blowing all night. But the upside is that all the trees are putting out bright green leaves as if in anticipation of the rain coming in December - even though there is not a sniff of it yet. Even the baobab at the back fence is beginning to sprout.
I was very honoured yesterday to name the new baby daughter of Edward (our head guide) and his wife Mable (our laundry lady). I was taken by surprise so I suggested my mum's name, Claire. But Malawians can't say i's so it was Crare and they looked disconcerted at that, so I suggested my granny's name Patricia, which was also difficult to pronounce and the baby nearby had the name already so they waited expectantly for another. So I suggested Jane, a name I have always loved for its simplicity, and because of my dear friend of the same name. They loved it too, so this afternoon at 3pm I am off to their house again to eat a meal in celebration of Jane. She'll be known as Jani though, as everything in Malawi ends in "i". (Remember the shopping list? Ben is a scream - he speaks his version of Chitchewa where he just speaks English and adds "i" onto everything!)
(An aside: there are very interesting names here - you know about Lyoness already, but some of my personal faves are Godafoloy (Godfrey) and Cleartone (known as Creaton).)
The boatmen are picking tamarind pods off our big tree in front of our office - it's interesting to eat - you eat the inner soft part of the pod - very spicy. They make a drink out of it here by mixing it with lots of sugar and water. And the kids are jumping on the trampoline which Franklyn is sitting on having a chat with other staff.
A very sad thing happened - our guide Foster's wife was expecting a baby which just wouldn't arrive. She was in the monkey Bay hospital and they let her get to 10 months, and of course it was then stillborn. Horrible. Would never have happened in the first world. People get so used to tragedy here. Staff leave for funerals every second day. But are back and cheerful within a few days. I suppose you get tough.
I won't bore you with another shopping saga - suffice it to say Pam and I did the Lilongwe big city jaunt last week and have returned with souls refreshed by cappuccino, home-made gelati and tortellini - and of course adorned with 30 more magnificent chitenjes from the Tanzanian ladies. (There was a leper there - a man covered in seeping sores who was yelled at by the ladies until he shuffled off - another third world vision!)
And I finally made it to the Monkey Bay market again yesterday. There is always a treat there. I was running short of bras (here bras are made of scratchy nylon with no underwire (necessary post-babes!) according to a pattern last revamped in 1955 - all pointy and Madonna circa 1984!). And blow me right over, but there was a pile of the most gorgeous la Senza bras, brand new, albeit a bit dusty, in exactly my size, in all the colours of the rainbow. I now own 10 - in every shade from orange, through the pinks, to lime green and turquoise and maroon. The joy! They cost the equivalent of less than $1 each. Also bought many boy's clothes, Gap and Oshkosh and whatnot - Ben and Eddie don;t own a new garment amongst them these days and are the best dressed kids in Cape Town (well, I think so - love a bargain!) Bush also owns many loud patterned shirts which he wears with his own inimitable flair and ubiquitous grey board shorts. I also dress Jurie (checked shirts and t-shirts), Buji (superhero things) and Java (anything pink!) (And shared the bra harvest with Gloria in the laundry who had requested help in that area.)
We just had a momentous occasion! A gal in the village had friends to stay - a gay couple, one of whom was a hairdresser. In exchange for a night on Domwe, he cut my, Bush's, Ben's, Eddie's, Jurie's, Buji's, Javi's, Pam's and Lucy's hair! Oh the thrill! We all look very smart. Poor guy must have been finished after that, but he was Edward Scissorhands and did us all with a smile!
Must go now - doing hostess duty on Mumbo tonight - kids will join me tomorrow - short staffed as everyone is off to music fest (not doing stall - long story...)

the strangeness of life

Life in the tropics is getting strange sometimes. Feel very disconnected from my old life in Kommetjie and yet not a part of this one here in many ways. I love working for Kayak Africa and seeing things change and move forward and being a part of it all - it is a great business and the staff are a pleasure and the islands are magnificent and the guest are always happy. We have just won an award from the Department of Tourism here as the most environmentally friendly camp in the country, so that was nice. I was interviewed on the radio when the journos came (as Bush and Jurie were away watching rugby!) - never heard it though, nor did anyone who knows me (probably a good thing) - perhaps it wasn't ever aired! We are also on the Times (of London)'s list of the top 24 green places in the world to visit in their Green Spaces Awards. The judge is coming to see us on Nov 10. So we are really doing well these days. Working life is good - it is just the lack of personal life - friends and family and like-minded people - that is a problem.
I have very little else to occupy my thoughts apart from my motherly concerns - copious guilt as ever about not being the mother of the margarine ads - in fact, not even bearing the faintest resemblance to that paragon who laughs and tosses her immaculate hair and rushes about playing lovely outdoor games with her gorgeous clean offspring whilst cheerfully holding hands with her admiring hubby - all this in sparkling white jeans...could throttle the woman!
Instead I sit sweatily in my kitchen office, in increasingly bizarre chitenje ensembles, grey locks all out of style and unkempt (no haircutters in this village!), trying to keep up with emails and little odd jobs and staff requests for cash and 3 million requests from four demanding children to draw boats and pour juice and hand out junk food and then to separate them when they have their hair-raising brawls with much screeching and yelling (them not me!). It all get wearying.
And then, much as I love my dear husband, he is not the chattiest of personas and is usually as exhausted as I am by the end of the day and then we need to do the suicide hour of bathing four children, after which we collapse in our respective hammocks and exchange a few ideas (usually about work) and then I skulk off to bed to read or watch a dodgy DVD (old sex in the city mini-series at the moment - a girl takes what she can get out here - and I find I am actually enjoying them!) Thank heavens for Pam on the island and Lucy in the office here who are gals after my own heart - if they weren't about I think I'd never be able to vent.
Tonight is the opening of a new bar - oh whoopee doopee. Have to go otherwise it will be considered a slight. So will trawl along after kids are asleep and do what is known in these parts as a "French exit" - a quiet, un-noticed slope off home... even Bush is already planning it as he and Jurie are setting off to watch the rugby - a double header - and he knows that that will be about all the beer he'll be able to take!
Looking forward to coming home now, but can't allow myself to think like that, must live every day properly here and come home triumphant!
Must go now - think I have been garbled.