It's Saturday morning again, and we have free WiFi all weekend, so it's time for me to update you all about our lives. This past week we've had a bit of time to relax around the house and get used to where we actually are.
On Tuesday we went to the market with our young friend from the compound. He took us on the minibus (which is essentially a van with as many seats in it as can be jammed into the space). He speaks Chichewa quite well, and has apparently taken the minibus quite a lot, so he seemed very comfortable with it. I would have been lost without him! We got on the first one that stopped for us, and ended up jammed together with all the other bodies in it. the cost was minimal, a dollar or so for all three of us. Five hundred kwacha sounds like a lot of money, but it's not actually!
We got to the market, which is also the terminal for all the minibuses, and got off with everyone else. Then we scampered out to the market. Goods of all sorts, mostly on open stalls, spread out on a mat on the ground. Our friend knows quite a few of the vendors, and asked after one who was missing. He helped us buy a few things, tomatoes, bananas, and a jackfruit (something we remember from Bangladesh). Then we were off again, winding our way through the maze of vendors back to the minibus terminal. Somehow, by some miracle he found the right minibus, amongst all the dozens of minibuses waiting there. A few minutes later, we were back at the place where we caught the first minibus and walked home from there, about a five minute walk. Quite an adventure.
Tuesday afternoon we went with Hamilton, a Malawian friend, to the "club", which is an organization advocating for the well-being of handicapped people. They meet each week and have various activities, ending with a meal either of porridge or of tea and bread. There were about 150 people there when we visited. I'm quite impressed with the work that they are doing. At present they are meeting in a parish hall, so they have nowhere to store their own stuff. They have a piece of land and are planning to build a hall of their own, when they have the funds to do so. Right now they have money to build a wall to enclose the property and discourage squatters, who are actually using the area for planting crops. Steve will be helping to supervise the building of the wall, as the funds are at least partly coming from the Presbyterian Church in Canada. When it comes time to evict the squatters, apparently they will have to pay compensation to the squatters for loss of income because of no longer being able to plant their crops there. This seems a strange arrangement to us Canadians, but that's the way it is here.
The latter part of the week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, we spent some time getting our applications for a TEP number. That is something we need to be legal in our work here in Malawi. Blair Bertrand, who shepherded us through the process, says that we got it done in record time. Things went remarkably smoothly, even to our Canadian way of thinking. We got a checklist of documents we needed. It turned out the only one we were missing was a covering letter from the Synod of Blantyre. We had several letters from them, but not a covering letter. We had another errand for Blair, so it was lunch time when we returned. Blair ended up typing us a letter for them to copy and print out, a proceeding which considerably facilitated the process.
We returned to the Immigration offices the next day and managed, after waiting some little time while they went through the papers, to get the receipt saying we are in the process of becoming legal. Apparently that should be enough for when we want to reenter Malawi after our holiday. Whew! It was interesting, And as Blair assured us, remarkably smooth, considering all the things that could have gone wrong!
This weekend we are mostly relaxing, although we'll go grocery shopping as well. We also have to pack our bags for our trip to South Africa! We leave for that on Monday. So my next blog will be written from a different country, likely from my phone, so a shorter blog.
Here are some pictures to show you what our surroundings are like.
This is the church we attended last Sunday, St. Michael and all the Angels.
In the back is our house, the Guest House. Very comfortable.