Market (Shopping), Continued

You may think when I say ‘shopping’ that when I reach the shop, I get a cart (trolley) and stroll down the aisles, choosing my groceries. Not so.  Instead, the shop has a counter where customers mingle in a disorderly mass (no lines/queues here!).  All the goods are displayed on shelves behind the counter, and usually the shop owner is at the register (till) and several assistants are waiting on the customers.  I stand at the counter and tell them what I want, item by item, and the assistant collects each item and puts it in a pile.  I will admit it is a bit difficult for me to see all my choices because of my eyesight!  If there is anything I need that I am unsure whether or not they have it, I always ask them and they tell me yes or no, and if they don’t have it, they are always happy to send me to a different shop that might have it.  When I am finished ordering, the assistant announces the price for each item to the owner, who punches the numbers into his calculator and then tells me my total while the assistant bags my groceries.  If I am buying anything bulky or heavy, he will carry it to the vehicle for me.  The shop owners are always very kind and always ask me how the baby is doing (Elijah always does the shopping with me).

There is only one shop in Petauke which has aisles.  That is the new ‘supermarket’ which is totally different from the Indian shops.  They do have aisles (four, to be exact), and they also have one push-trolley with a basket on top.  What I find amusing about this particular shop is that I always have someone in attendance when I go there (unless David is with me).  They hover behind me and insist on pushing the trolley, carrying my groceries, and bagging them for me at the till.  I haven’t been able to figure out yet whether this is special treatment because I am ‘mzungu’ or whether it is typical for most of their customers.  This is the only shop where I have been able to find real butter and 100% fruit juice, and sometimes cheese, but I don’t usually buy much else there.

The one major problem with shopping in Petauke is the drunk men, who like to loiter outside the shops and can sometimes be very obnoxious.  They really like to harass us mzungu women. In the market sometimes people will come up and try to grab Elijah out of my arms - simply because they want to hold the mzungu baby.  But if they frighten him and he starts to cry, they will just laugh.   It's a hard life being a celebrity.  :)

In the market this week I bought a pumpkin!  Pumpkins are now coming into season.  I can’t base my shopping on a pre-planned menu because everything I buy is dependent upon what is available in the market.  I cannot assume that there will be garlic, green beans, or bananas available every week, for instance.  So it is difficult to plan ahead.  If possible, I usually go to the boma (town) to shop once a week, and occasionally if I have the opportunity to go twice then I will usually stock up again on fresh vegetables which don’t last long.  I am gradually building up relationships with the women who sell in the market, and because I am a regular customer they often give me 'basela' (extra).

a day in the life

For now at least, this is what a typical day is like.

06hrs: our alarm goes off (but our other alarm, in the form of a cute but precocious 8-month-old, may have already gone off!)  I get myself and Elijah ready for the day and make breakfast (usually we have eggs, porridge, or cereal).

06:20 breakfast

06:45 worship with the students (Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri mornings).  The students have a very organized time of worship in which they have 15 minutes of psalm singing, 15 minutes of reading/exposition of a passage, and 15 minutes of prayer.  Each day of the week is designated for a specific item for prayer, i.e. ‘Thanksgiving’, ‘World concerns’, ‘Church’ or ‘College’ etc. and they list various prayer requests under that day’s topic, and then various students are called upon to pray.  Plus they systematically pray for 2 of the students each morning. They have a rotation for the reading and sharing from the Scripture and are currently working systematically through 1 Samuel.  Most students are able to share in English though it is very difficult and nerve-wracking for them, but a few preach in Nyanja.    The same with the prayers – most students are able to pray in English but a few can only do it comfortably in Nyanja.  The orderliness of the worship prevents any confusion as to who is assigned to do what, and also means that we are able to hear each of the students progressing in their knowledge of the Scriptures.  We really enjoy coming along for these times.

07:30 worship ends; lectures begin; David either starts lecturing (he teaches 2-3 times a week) or he goes off to study & prepare lectures in the College office.  I go home with Elijah for the morning chores.  The house always needs to be swept and there are usually dishes to be washed.  And of course a baby to be amused!  I usually try to wash one load of laundry per day, otherwise I fall behind very, very quickly because something unexpected always comes up during the week and washing laundry takes so much time (and is weather dependent).  On Thursday  mornings Asnet, the wife of Samuel who works on the farm, comes to help me clean the house.  She sweeps and washes the floors, cleans the toilet and shower, and wipes things down.  She is usually here for 2 ½ hours.  I don’t do laundry on Thursdays because my washing machine drains the dirty water into my shower  which she has just cleaned!

08-8:45 Elijah usually goes down for his morning nap sometime around now and sleeps anywhere from 30 min – 1 hour.  While he's asleep, I try to use the time to do things which are difficult to do while he's awake, like baking or cooking, or email/blogging.  But laundry can take up a whole morning all by itself!

09:30 first lecture period ends,and the students have a 30 minute break.

10hrs second lecture period begins.  If David is not lecturing, Elijah and I visit him in the office to bring him a morning snack.  I might also take Elijah on a walk to the farm to feed the kitchen scraps to the pigs.  The remainder of my morning is spent amusing Elijah: reading stories, singing songs, or sitting in the front garden pulling weeds.

12noon I make our lunch, and feed Elijah his lunch.

12:30-13:30 is lunch break.  David comes home and we eat lunch, and usually play a game like Triominos or Quiddler to relax a bit.  On Wednesdays we eat lunch (nshima with relish) at the College with the students and staff.

13:00 Elijah is usually down for his afternoon nap around this time.  Depending on how busy my day has been, I often take a nap with him.

15:00 We are usually awake from our nap by now, and often there is something going on during the afternoon.  On Wednesdays I go to Marjanne’s house where the ladies get together to work on sewing or other craft projects.  On Thursdays Marjanne has literacy classes for the local women from the village to teach them how to read and write Nyanja.  On Saturdays there is a children's outreach ministry.  Other afternoons I work on blog posts, emails or just keeping the baby happy!

 

16:00 time to go for our daily walk.  Usually it is myself, Marjanne and Jacomien who go together but sometimes Mirjam joins us.  We don’t have a set time, but just sometime after 16hrs we meet and go.  If we have time, we make two circuits instead of one.  We always try to exercise for at least 30 minutes.  This is a refreshing time of day to be outside and it is so nice to enjoy the company and fellowship also.

17:00 David quits work for the day and comes home.  This is Elijah’s “daddy time” while I make dinner.  

18:00 dinner

18:30 family worship.  We read (currently in Proverbs), pray, and sing systematically through the Psalter.

18:45 I bathe Elijah while David washes the dinner dishes

19:00 I nurse Elijah and put him to bed, and if he stays quiet than David and I have some time by ourselves to talk about our day and just enjoy relaxing!

21:00  We try to be in bed by this time, since there is always such an early morning ahead!

laundry

I am very thankful that our house has a washing machine, and that we have electricity to run it.  It has been a learning experience working with this machine, partly because it is a twin-tub (which I was not familiar with) and partly because I have had to learn what to do to get my clothes as clean as possible.  For those of you who, like me, had never been introduced to the wonders of the twin-tub, basically it has one tub for washing, and then you transfer the laundry into the next tub for spinning.  

To start out, I have to manually fill the washing machine with water.  I haven’t counted how many refills from a 2-liter water jug this requires.  All I know is that it takes a while!  Thankfully there is a small sink next to the washer which means I don’t have to walk back and forth to get water.  Washing in hot water is even more complicated – I usually turn on the shower and let the hot water run into a large bucket (it usually takes about 1 ½- 2 buckets of water to fill the washer) and then adding a kettle-full of boiled water.  I always wash Elijah’s cloth diapers in hot water, but the rest of my laundry is washed in cold water.   

Once the washer is full (and hopefully turned on,  if the power is strong enough) the wash cycle lasts 15 minutes, and then I have to switch the valves over so that the dirty, soapy water drains out. I cannot spend more than 15 minutes away from the washer because it doesn’t switch automatically, nor will it switch off – it will keep running “dry” if I am not there – wasting a lot of electricity, and probably bad for the motor as well!  Because I have to stay so close to the washer, I find it hard to get anything else done at the same time, including caring for Elijah.  I try to run one load of laundry every day during the week, so that I don't fall behind on the washing, because if I have to run more than one load in a day - that’s a long morning spent in front of the washing machine!  The only day that I avoid washing laundry is Thursday because a lovely Zambian lady named Asnet comes to clean the house for me that day, and the washing machine drains into the shower which she has freshly scrubbed!

Once the laundry has completed one wash cycle, I have found that residue from the detergent remains, so I always run it through another wash cycle without soap as a second rinse.  So again, I fill the washer up with water, wait 15 minutes, and then drain it when it is finished.

Some loads of laundry require extra work.  Elijah's diapers, for example, I have already mentioned that I wash them in hot water rather than cold.  (I also use disposable liners in his cloth diapers which definitely cuts down on the mess!)  I pre-soak the soiled diapers in a little bleach for 5-10 minutes, then wring them out, scrub out the stains by hand using detergent paste, and then add them to the rest of the load and wash as normal.  I also do this when I am washing our "whites", so that things will stay really white in spite of the Zambian mud!

Once rinsed, the next task is to transfer the laundry into the second tub for spinning.  This is a smaller tub, so I have found that I usually have to split the load into at least two portions in order to fit, and spin them separately.  Each spin takes at least 5 minutes, or longer depending on how thoroughly the washer has spun it and whether I need to run it through again.  Unfortunately, the spinner really doesn't work effectively at all, and my laundry is usually just as soaking wet as it was before I spun it!  So now I've given up on the spinner and I just wring each piece of laundry out by hand.  Thankfully living in such a hot, sunny climate means that my laundry usually dries on the clothesline within a few hours. 

It may not be as convenient as most washing machines, but at least it works (for the most part), and it does save me having to wash everything by hand! And when I think of all the local Zambian women who often have to walk for many kilometres to carry water home and then wash everything by hand - I am very grateful for the conveniences that I am blessed with.

Market

Petauke has many several shops run by Indians, where you can get most things that you will need.  They sell dry goods, and things for around the house.  No one shop sells everything, though, so sometimes you have to visit several in order to collect all the items on your shopping list.  The Indians give us good service because we are Westerners and they respect us – or at least, they respect our money.  We give them good business, so they like us. I have found only one shop in Petauke where I can buy real butter (not margarine) and 100% fruit juice.  These are very difficult to find anywhere else.  Things like chocolate and icecream are absolute luxury items.

The market is a busy place with many stalls.  The main foods you will find in the market are cabbage, tomatoes, rape, and onions.  I can sometimes (but not always) find green beans and green peppers as well.  The food is very cheap to us, and yet every little bit we buy helps support the Zambians who are farming it.  To give you an idea of how much things cost. . . Zambian currency is kwacha, and there are approximately 7,000 kwacha to the GBP.  I can buy a heap of potatoes for 4000K, 5-6 tomatoes for 1000K, a small bag of green beans for 1000K. . . nothing on my list costs more than 7,000K.  You can buy apples (which are expensive) and bananas but mangos and other fruits are only available a couple months out of the year, so fruit is very limited.  You can buy potatoes but sweet potatoes are very hard to find. You can buy groundnuts (peanuts) and different kinds of beans.  You can buy dried fish!   But there are lots of vegetables which it is nearly impossible to find in Petauke.

At the Zambeef shop you can buy meat (but often it is not very nice), and milk, and yoghurt, and yoghurt drink.  Sometimes I have heard that they have cheese, but I have not found any cheese yet.  What they have is always dependent on what the truck has brought.   The truck normally comes on Tuesdays and Fridays but you never know when it will actually come.

The bread in Petauke is not nice at all.  It is crumbly and impossible to make a sandwich or to butter properly.  The only nice bread I have found is the fresh buns which the women sell in the market, but that is not proper sandwich bread.

Here at the College farm, I can buy fresh eggs.  24,000K for 30 free-range eggs (approximately 3 GBP).  Sometimes I can also get fresh produce depending on how much they have available.  Feeding the students is the main responsibility of the farm, and I can always shop in the Petauke market instead.

Evicting bats

We thought that perhaps banging on the ceiling with a broomstick several times a day and unsettling them with noise and light would give them the hint that someone else was living in this house and they were welcome to leave.  Nope.  These bats just wouldn’t take a hint.  We were having no success finding where they were coming in and out of the roof.  Finally, after a week of constantly cleaning bat droppings out of our kitchen and dealing with the noise and the awful smell, it was time to evict our resident bats.

Phil and David spent some time on a ladder on both sides of the house examining the area just under the roof for any signs of where the bats were finding entrance and exit.  Then they gingerly climbed onto our very, very hot roof (which is simply metal sheets) in the blazing mid-day sun and using sticks and hammers, began prying the metal sheets up so that they could look underneath and find the bats.  They couldn’t find them at first, because as soon as the bats were disturbed they moved to a different corner.  After a while they chased them down and Phil, who was lying on his stomach on the hot roof with his head stuck down under the metal sheet, was able to see the bats huddled in the corner alongside the central beam of the house, over the kitchen ceiling.

They sprayed the area liberally with Raid, just to annoy the bats really because it wouldn’t actually affect them, and then replaced the metal sheet because it was getting too hot to do anything just then.  They came back just at dark planning to lift the roof again, remove the bats and block all the cracks and crevices so that they wouldn’t be able to get back in. However, that night when they came back, they discovered the bats had already left.  Apparently having their “cave” broken into was finally the last straw for them.  Thankfully, they haven’t come back.

I have a few photos of Operation Bat Removal, which I would love to post for you.  Hopefully one of these days the internet will be functioning unbelievably well and I will be able to share photos!

UPDATE: (four days later)  The bats did come back.  So Operation Bat Removal was underway again.  This time several of the students and someone from town were hired to remove large portions of the roof, and the bats were forcibly removed.  Then all the cracks and crevices between the roof and the ceiling were filled in with concrete to prevent them from returning.

UPDATE: (one week later)  Today (the day I am posting this) I had a surprise waiting for me when I was running the washing machine this morning.  I suddenly saw a bat crawling -- I don't know where it came from -- and it crawled into the bottom of the washing machine!  I could hear it rattling around inside, and I didn't know what to do.  So I waited, and in a few minutes (because the washing machine was on, so I'm sure it didn't like being below all the noise and vibrations) it came back out, and then it climbed on top of my laundry basket.  It was looking for a place to roost.  It was very interesting to see it climbing up and down on things, all while upside down!  Eventually it made its way across the floor to the door, where it tried to roost behind the door, and that is where it met its demise.  It was sad to kill it, but I don't like having live bats in the house.

Welcome to Petauke

I apologize that you haven’t heard anything from me since we arrived in Lusaka.  After I posted my last entry, I was informed that the internet bandwidth where we were staying was so limited that we should only check our email once a day – NO other webpages.  So the blog had to wait.  After we arrived at Covenant College, the satellite dish for the internet was still broken and we had to wait for the technician to finally come out and fix it.  Unfortunately even now the fixed internet is still not 100% and I have to plug my computer into the modem in Phil’s office in order to get a strong enough connection to update my blog!  So I am writing blog posts in Word while offline, and then posting them all at once when I have the opportunity and the internet will cooperate.

So, on the 18^th of February, we drove from Lusaka to our new home at Covenant College.  Well, I say we “drove” but actually we rode with Phil, the Farm Manager at the College.  It was a beautiful day to travel and the five hours went by quite quickly.  I am delighted to inform you that I saw my first African wildlife on this trip!!  We saw several baboons on the side of the road as we approached the Luangwa River.   Yes, as unbelievable as it may seem, I never saw a single wild animal during my 3 months in Uganda in 2008, and was bitterly disappointed, so the opportunity to see baboons before I even arrived in Petauke was exhilarating!

Anyway, we arrived at Covenant College around 3pm and moved our 4 trunks into our new home.  There are welcoming flower beds at the front of the house with marigolds, canna lilies and other pretty plants.  It is a small but adequate house, with one bedroom, a living area, kitchen, toilet, shower, mudroom/laundry area, and an extra room/bedroom at the other end of the house.  When we arrived we quickly realized that the ceiling over the kitchen was inhabited by a colony of bats!  They were making their presence known not only by the huge racket overhead (it sounded like a couple hundred mice running back and forth) but also by the large amount of droppings all over my kitchen counters, sink, floor, everything.

We had just enough time to scope out the situation, set up Elijah’s travel cot, find the things we would need that night and familiarize ourselves slightly with our surroundings before we went for dinner at the Molenaars’ at 5pm.  The whole team was there: the Molenaars (Cees, Mirjam, Joas, Rhoda, Obed, and Moses), the Zwemstras (Heinrich, Jacomien, Cobus, Nelrie, and Anel), Phil, Marjanne, Mark, and two other Dutch NGO girls, Annika and Janet.  Only ourselves and Phil are native English speakers!  Cees and Heinrich are the other lecturers, Phil manages the farm, Marjanne heads up the Christian Education Ministry, and Mark is the tutor for Joas and Rhoda Molenaar.  It was an enjoyable dinner gathering and for me, it was good to finally put faces with names!  We received a warm welcome from our new colleagues and it has been fun getting to know them.

Our first full day in the house was spent in “clean and fix” mode.  The top priority was screening the windows and doors with mosquito netting, and David spent the whole day finding ingenious ways to rig the netting up until he had made the whole house livable.  I was scrubbing the bat dung out of my kitchen so that I could unpack my pots and pans into clean kitchen cabinets.

Now that we are unpacked and have done some fixing-up and organization of the house, it is starting to feel like home.  I hope to be able to post some photos soon, but there is no way to know whether the internet will be good enough to upload anything. It is a struggle just to get it to update my blog!