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!

Zambian weather (and photos)

I was asked a good question about what season it is here in Zambia.  Right now we are in the rainy season which runs from approximately November to approximately March (give or take a month or so).  It is quite warm this time of year, around 85 degrees F during the day (not sure how warm it is at night).  In the sun at mid-day it's still pretty intense.  The warmest time of year is from September to November-ish.  It gets very, very hot then, and very dry because the rains haven't come yet.  They don't really have a "winter" here.  The coldest time of year is between June-August, but it doesn't exactly get cold, just chilly (the Africans feel the cold though).  Temperature-wise it's far more like autumn than actual winter!

Below is a photo of a couple of the boys slaughtering the old hog which had gotten too big to 'service' the females anymore, so he has now been turned into bacon:

Elijah meeting the newborn piglet!  He reached out his hand immediately to pet it, and here I am prompting him to stroke it gently.

 The six piglets were born yesterday.

 These lambs were born yesterday as well.  The mother is the brown one and the father is the black-and-white one.

 The boys preparing their lunch - 'nshima' which is ground maize (corn) boiled into a very thick porridge which is eaten in chunks with 'relish' of meat or vegetables.

 Elijah making new friends!

 Looking at the new ducklings who hatched this week.  They were in the far corner of the duck house.

new blog title

Hey folks, if you'd be willing to suggest new titles for my blog. . . now that we are no longer residing in Scotland, 'thistle epistles' doesn't quite suit anymore. . . I will appreciate any creative suggestions, especially ones that might be clever for a blog in Africa.  Comment away!

goodbye Glasgow. . . hello Zambia

This is our first full day in Zambia!  We are staying with friends in Lusaka, the capital. They have a farm
and host 25 boys who would otherwise be living on the streets.

We arrived very early yesterday morning after an all-night flight from London.  Elijah slept pretty well.  The flight was virtually empty -- only 75 people on board.  I was amused that as soon as we reached altitude and the seat belt sign went off, people immediately began wandering the plane and introducing themselves to each other.  "Hi, I'm from the Copperbelt, do you live in Zambia too?"  (The Copperbelt is the province in the north of Zambia. ) The people sitting directly behind us were American missionaries.  We were on the same flight with our Farm Manager, Phil, as well as one of the Dutch girls who is an NGO worker in the town that we will soon call home.  It was nice to see so many friendly faces.  I noted that the African couple seated a couple of rows back were praying quietly together during the flight.

I actually might have gotten a little bit of sleep if it wasn't for the seat belt sign which kept going on because of turbulence, which meant that I had to keep Elijah strapped to me and hold him as he slept.  Otherwise I would have made him a bed on the extra seat and curled up myself!

We are thankful that when we reached Lusaka airport, since we knew where we were going this time (David having visited once before) we were able to get to the front of the line in immigration, which went very smoothly.  All our bags were on the belt by the time we cleared immigration so we were able to collect them quickly, and we had no trouble in customs.

It is hot here.  :)  Obvious, I know, and probably over-stated too, but it does need to be said.  I haven't encountered hot weather since I married David, 19 months ago, and it is admittedly a brutal shock to the system when arriving straight from the chill of Glasgow.  But thankfully it isn't as bad as it could be!  I know that we have arrived as things are beginning to cool down (September and October are the hottest months of the year).

More later, but for now it's time to get Elijah settled into bed.  For those of you who might be wondering, we're at GMT+2 here which means 7 hours ahead of the East Coast, and 2 hours ahead of the U.K.

crunch time

We've booked tickets for Zambia!

We're moving on the 9th of February.

That's 41 days away.

Of those 41 days. . .

18 will be spent in the States.

4 are Lord's Days.

Which means that only 19 days remain in which we can finish all our packing and all our preparations.  Finish working out all the logistics of international shipping of our belongings.  Finish making all the purchases here and in the States of all the miscellany that needs to be toted to Africa with us.  Finish cleaning the house.  Finish pulling all my hair out.  Finish going stir-crazy.

Ahem. 

And of those 19 days. . . one will be taken up by our open-house this Saturday (which I still need to do all the baking and cleaning for).  And one will be taken up by David's ordination on the 28th of January.  And that leaves us with 17.

SEVENTEEN DAYS!!!!

Elijah update

maybe if I post photos of my adorable 5 and 1/2 month old son, someone will comment on my posts?

Elijah is now eating a little bit of solid (mashed/pureed) foods and still breastfeeding as much as ever.  He loves to eat.  He is fascinated with water bottles and loves taking a sip when we will let him.  He is very happily interacting more and more with his toys, and he loves books, and when we sing to him.  He also loves anything paper, which will be quickly crumpled and salivated upon until it is unrecognisable!  He will sleep anywhere, which is quite handy.  He loves to cuddle and is taking an interest in touching Mama and Daddy's faces when they hold him.  We get ear-splitting grins and cute giggles from this little guy on a daily basis.  When we are out and about, he makes instant friends with strangers in the elevator, on the bus, on the train, on the tube, at restaurants...  His smile brightens their day.  I have watched him actually looking down the aisle on the train for someone to catch his eye so he can smile at them.  (I think he gets bored with just Mama and Daddy all the time and wants to interact with somebody else!)

in London last week

 his first chinese food ;-)

Elijah loves food.  Particularly if it's food that he sees his mama and daddy eating!

see that little face?  "More, mama, more!"

don't worry, I didn't give him any of my spicy Indian food (though I did let him taste my mango lassi!)

what Elijah does on the train!

what Elijah does on the bus

and then he does this

and more of this

and when he wakes up he does this :)

Elijah had his first sweet potato at Thanksgiving... 

but what he desperately wanted was some of Daddy's turkey leg!

home again

We are home, safe and sound, after a very fun but tiring trip south -- first to Wales, and then on to London. 

We left early on Thursday morning.  It was quite an adventure just getting out of Glasgow, which was snow-bound and icy!  Our train to Birmingham was scheduled to leave at 10am and to catch it, we had to get from our house on the West End to the train station in the city centre.  We phoned for a taxi first, thinking that would be the most reliable form of transportation. . . and were informed that no taxis would be available for at least an hour, if at all.  Well, that would have made us miss our Birmingham train, so we decided to walk to the nearest train station and hopefully catch a train into the city centre, since supposedly the local trains were running.  Well, we reached the station after a treacherous and difficult 15-minute hike through the snow dragging our luggage. . . and when our train arrived, no one was allowed to board it!  Because so few trains were back up and running, those which WERE running were hugely over-crowded, and the conductors refused to let anyone else board the packed train.  Now we were starting to really get concerned.  It looked like we were going to have all our plans scuppered simply because we couldn't journey the 5 miles from our house to city centre in time to catch our train south.  We had two choices - we could wait at least 30 minutes for the next train to come through, which was severely delayed and which we had NO guarantee they would let us board.  Or we could walk back down to the main road and hopefully catch a bus which would take us to city centre. . . a risky choice, since the buses were only running once every half hour and were facing severe delays because of slippery roads.  But that seemed to be our best option.  Thankfully, the Lord controls all these things and we were able to quickly catch a bus which got us to the city centre train station FIVE minutes before our train was scheduled to depart!!

At which time we were informed that our Birmingham train was canceled and we would be placed on the next train to London which was leaving 45 minutes later.

So we boarded that train and finally left Glasgow after a chaotic, stressful start to our journey.  Unfortunately, being on the train to London meant that we would have to transfer and catch a different train part-way through our journey, which just added to the nail-biting experience.  The whole way south we were wondering if we were going to make our connection in Birmingham.  It was touch-and-go because the train was so delayed and because the transfer took up precious time.  We arrived in Birmingham at the exact time our bus was scheduled to LEAVE Birmingham -- but again, the Lord was gracious to us, and even though we had a frantic 10-minute walk from the train station to the bus station, our bus was delayed long enough that we caught it with PLENTY of time to spare!  Isn't God good?  :)

So then we were on our way to Cardiff by bus.  It was a smooth and uneventful ride, apart from being delayed and arriving in Cardiff an hour later than expected.  We then caught a local bus to get to our friends' house where we would be staying.  David thought he knew where we were going, but he didn't, and we got off the bus at the wrong place and were lost in Cardiff, in the dark, in the freezing cold.  Thankfully we called our friends and they came out in the car and rescued us!  It made for a very long, stressful day of travel but we were thankful to arrive in Cardiff in one piece, and very thankful that in spite of all the hiccups, we didn't have to re-book any of our tickets because the Lord worked all the timing out!

We had an absolutely lovely weekend.  It was fun staying with our friends Todd and Kathyryn and their four children.  For David it was a renewal of old acquaintances (they went to seminary together) and I was enjoying getting to know them for the first time. 

On Saturday we attended the wedding of our dear friends Colin and Victoria. It was a beautiful wedding with lots of smiles and laughs, good food and amusing speeches.  We are so happy to see them married and starting their new life together.

On Sunday we worshipped in Cardiff with Todd and Kathyryn, and had a restful day.  Then we were up bright and early Monday morning to catch our bus to London.  Thankfully the bus trip went more smoothly than our previous travels!  The background to our London trip (for those of you who don't know) is that on July 11th, 2008, David and I met for the first time in London, and that meeting was what eventually resulted in us getting married exactly one year later (on July 11th, 2009).  We weren't able to go back to London for our 1-year anniversary on July 11th, 2010 because we had a newborn baby occupying our time and attention and mama wasn't up to traveling either.  :)  When we were planning our trip south to Cardiff, David suggested that we take a detour on the way home and spend one night in London, to retrace our steps from 2008.  :)  It was a romantic suggestion which I eagerly accepted!  So that's why we took the bus to London. 

We arrived in the early afternoon on Monday and took the tube to the place we would be staying.  Before I go any further, let me just say that it is SO difficult juggling two pieces of luggage, a diaper bag, a suit bag, a collapsible stroller, a backpack, and a baby up and down flights of stairs to get around on the tube!!  Even with the two of us (and we are both strong) we were struggling to manage it all.  We were very thankful for the few tube stations which had elevators!

The Highbury Centre is a Christian guesthouse in North London which provides reasonably-priced B&B accommodation.  David and I each stayed there in 2008 and so we planned to stay there again, only booking one room this time.  ;-)  We left our luggage there (oh the relief!) and headed back out (it was late afternoon by now) to retrace our steps.  We started out at the British Museum which was where our evening had started in 2008, but we took it at a bit more relaxed pace this time.  Then we headed out in search of the particular Chinese restaurant where we had dinner together in 2008.  The thing was, we didn't remember what the name of the restaurant was OR where it was located!  We only had a vague direction that we knew we needed to walk in, and we both remembered that it was on a corner on the right side of the road, and it was a two-story restaurant.  Amazingly, we found it!!  And it took less than 20 minutes.  The food was good and we enjoyed our dinner together.  Then we started out again on our walking tour of London.  We walked to Trafalgar Square and then to Buckingham Palace before making our way towards the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.  By the time we had gotten that far, Elijah was cold and tired and very unhappy being in the stroller. We wanted to find a cafe or something where we could sit and have something warm to drink while I nursed him, but we couldn't find one and he was crying.  So I ended up having to sit on a damp wooden bench in the garden behind Westminster Abbey, nursing Elijah outside on a damp briskly cold night!  Ahhh, the joys of motherhood.  Brrrr, just thinking about it makes me shiver!  After that we were all a bit worn out and Elijah was becoming undone, so we just took the tube back to the Highbury Centre and settled in for the night, having worn ourselves out completely.

On Tuesday morning, after having a leisurely breakfast and assembling our luggage once again, we maneuvered our way through the tube to King's Cross where we would later catch our train home to Glasgow.  There we left the two heaviest pieces of luggage so that we could travel a bit lighter, and then we headed out by tube towards the Tower of London.  We walked from there across Tower Bridge, which David and I both have clear memories of doing together in 2008 -- we were paying more attention to our conversation and enjoying each other's company than we were the scenery, I think!  Then we went in search of a place where we could eat lunch, and after wandering around for more than half an hour, we found an Indian restaurant close to London Bridge.  YUM. I was really in the mood for some Indian food and that hit the spot.

Then we returned to King's Cross but we still had a long time before our train left, so we walked down to the British Library, which we had never been to before.  Another of my husband's brilliant ideas.  :)  We specifically wanted to see the Gutenberg Bible, and we did!   We also saw the Magna Carta.  I could have walked around in there for hours.  It was such a fascinating place.

Our train left London at 3pm and we reached Glasgow at 9pm.  Those hours were spent cuddling a tired baby who was  ready to be home, and trying to keep him happily occupied.  We are so thankful to have a little boy who is such a good traveler, and who will sleep anywhere!  It would be very difficult to take these trips and to travel by bus or train for hours if that wasn't the case.  Hopefully he will do just as well on his first transatlantic flight next month.  :)  Today we are resting and recovering -- all three of us are worn out, but it was a fun time and brought back many happy memories (and made new ones).  We took lots of photos which I have posted on Facebook, and I will try to post a few on here eventually.

short, overdue update!

It's cold.

We're busy.

It's really difficult to post on my blog when I haven't posted in a while.  It's really rather self-defeating. I sit here with my fingers poised over the keyboard, and think, "Where do I start?"  And then because I can't figure out where to start, I don't start, and nothing gets posted, and then the next day the exact same sequence happens again.

Anyway.

It is bitter cold here. And snowy.  And icy.  And it has been for two weeks now.  And I am tired of my toes being cold, even when I am wearing socks and slippers!

Elijah has one tooth, and I'm positive he's working on a second, because the grumpiness has increased rather than decreasing.  He is curious about everything.  I can keep him occupied for fifteen minutes with a brightly colored unopened package of gum.  To be honest, Elijah is the main reason I haven't posted.  I have a hard enough time keeping up with the laundry and dishes, while constantly occupying Mr. Cute-but-Demanding Five-Month-Old. 

Speaking of which, this is all I am able to post right now because we are heading towards naptime!