November 5 - Market Day

Malamulo Hospital offices are open Sunday through Thursday, so generally, Randy has Fridays off. I am so glad to have him home. He gave Nathan and Ryan their spelling tests, then went outside to play with them while I walked to Makwasa market to buy our vegetables for the week. Not every village market has the same vegetables. Voombwe market (and I am not sure how that is supposed to be spelled) has beautiful carrots, cucumbers, avocados and lettuce greens. Makwasa market has tomatoes, some greens for cooking, onions, cabbage and mangos. Every village has bananas! Mango season is just starting. Randy bought a grocery bag full of ripe mangos for 150 Kwacha, equivalent to less than $1.00. I cut up some to freeze (and thaw periodically when the power goes out) to put on the hot oatmeal we have for breakfast some days. The boys scarf them down for dinner – very juicy, sticky and stringy, but worth it for the divine flavor. The market has many vendors and I try to buy a few things from several of them to spread the ‘wealth’.

I planned my market purchases so that I bought tomatoes, peanuts, mangos and greens, then the heavy cabbage on the way back out of town. It all fit in my Malawian basket, which was pretty heavy when I was done. I also purchased a few food items to send home with our helpers for their families tonight. Elisa (Randy’s sister) met me heading out of the market, so I returned back with her and Jackie (the new pediatric nurse practitioner here for 5 months) to go to the Tea House for a coke and some fried bread.

The Tea House is a small shack – outside there is a man sewing on a foot-treadle machine, dogs, children, banana peels. Inside there are odds and ends used hardware for sale, nails, and old tools. In one corner is a cooler filled with Coke, and Orange Fanta, glass bottles. There is a bottle opener on a string, hanging from the rafter, the tops falling on the floor. We sat down to drink and listen to Malawian talk-radio. The dirt and grime don’t bother me as much now. I guess I am getting used to being dirty. When the wind picks up in the market, red dust is everywhere. Red really is a color to describe Africa.

Nathan, Ryan and Trevor have discovered how to swing from a palm frond hanging down off a tree in our yard. There are no parks here – no swings, slides or climbing structures. Necessity is the mother of invention in many areas of life here!

All the power outages this week caused our water system to also fail, so we didn’t have any water for a day or so. Thankfully I filled a few buckets before the flow ceased. When the power came back on, our hot water still was not flowing. So Randy climbed up in the attic and ended up using his hands to clean out a bucket of slimy sludge from the tank that fills with a trickle of cold water. When we turn the heater on, the water flows through a heating unit. We’ve discovered that we cannot let the hot water tank levels get too low or they clog. I think I’ll write a manual of all the quirks of this house for the next residents!

God is good. His faithfulness is new every morning. This experience is very stretching, and I pray that we will remain pliable!