tea and verandahs

Hello all
Just back last night from Lujeri tea estate underneath the towering Mulanje mountain. So very gorgeous, just as I had hoped: all those magnificent green slopes and huge trees and red earth roads and old stone walls propping up the plantations - aah! Lujeri also has a huge river running through it which has beautiful rock pools to swim in, so we spent a very happy morning wallowing there. And the house we stayed in was gorgeous too: all old pink walls and a wrap-around wide verandah with old couches on it for lazing on, and ceiling fans (wonky and a bit scary so we never slept with them on as I always think they are going to come spiraling down any minute to decapitate one!), and two lovely men who cooked and made beds and brought trays of tea at opportune moments. I know I sound like a shocking colonial, but golly it is nice to have a cook on holiday!
We bought a lot of lovely fresh fruit and veg at the Tyolo local market (lots of little old ladies under reed roofs with little piles of home-grown produce: strawberries, custard apples, pineapples (so sweet!), cauliflower, broccoli, marrows and now mangoes as far as the eye can see! We ate huge fruit salads after every meal and lots of veg meals. Most of the time we spent lolling about on the verandah reading books while Ben and Eddie were exemplary children playing made-up games with seedpods they found which they made into characters, replete with different voices and even accents! All day they played that game.
And we had such a treat: a thunderstorm of epic winds and lightning and thunder during our first day. Loved it! So then we were guilt-free about not doing anything with the day. The next morning Pam and I did a tour of the tea factory: when I told the manager that I drank about 12 cups a day, he was my biggest fan and addressed the rest of the explanations to me. We even did the tasting and spitting and examining of the hue and I loved every minute. In fact I spotted a place I would like to work in my next incarnation (when?): The Tea Research Foundation of Central Africa, Mimosa Station! Doesn't that sound ideal? It is a little one-story white building with a verandah on all four sides and rickety french doors and a tin roof all set under enormous shady trees with different coloured bougainvilleas cascading out of them. Not sure what I'd do there, but researching tea sounds within my capabilities!
The flame trees are flowering all over Malawi - beautiful spreading trees with not a leaf, just red or orange flower on every stalk. Will attach a pic. So are the baobabs - if you haven't seen a baobab flower, you have missed out. It is like a ballerina in a tutu/rose/frothy frilly soft white confection, a thing of joy!
There are rumblings and clouds forming every evening now, but the rains have not yet come. Can't wait, though I am sure I will not enjoy the dampness for long! But the heat really builds up now, and you can feel the pressure building up, waiting to be released by a nice big explosive thundery storm!
My computer is doing something strange now - deleting everything in front of the cursor if I try to type into a line I've already written - so no editing allowed! Can only go on from here.
So we are back in the saddle again and no more holidays for us! November is still quite quiet, but December is full and we have the whole of Mumbo booked for two days for a wedding. So that might require some extra work too. Think we'll get Cleartone's church choir to sing on Christmas day on Mumbo and our gnomish gardener, Mavuto (which means Trouble!) and his son, Nindi, to drum on New Year's for the edification and entertainment of the guests... Have to think of something nice to eat too. And what to do here and who with???
Being a bad mum again and have bathed and toothcleaned the darlings and popped them under the net to watch Buzz Lightyear again while I sit under mine to email.
Will affix pretty pics and then do some mothering.