No elephants here

Elephant Marsh was named by David Livingstone because he found 800 of the pachyderms. Sadly none remain but here are a heron, a stork and an egret scared off by our airboat.

Plenty of fishermen still use the family dugouts. (Worth clicking to enlarge)

More coloured trees

Two trees from the campus. The yellow one is Cassia, one of a family of plants that produce senna laxatives. Rather ironic that senna is not available on the national formulary and we have to make do with liquid paraffin! The purple one is Solanum (see the tomato-like fruit), a family that includes Deadly Nightshade, tomato and potato.
  

Eddie Stobbart?

In Britain, some people are Eddie Spotters. Here you might be a Royal Mail spotter. Bee Bikes have been importing ex-Royal Mail bikes for a few years. They are well-made and popular, even at about £90 each. Tempting to muse on why post takes a while to get here; 8 days to several weeks it seems.
 

Mopping up

Someone must have decided that it would be cheaper to make mops than to buy them, hence the arrival of a large sack of cotton and a bundle of poles. 

Shopping

The supermarkets don't generally stock bananas, and not a lot of other fruit. Instead there are people in the car parks selling such items as you get back in your car. This man regularly finds me in town, at church or the bank, and offers whatever is seasonal. Talking of which, I'd better just go and eat my pineapple.
 

Misty Cliffs at Scarborough

They said, "Don't go to Cape Town at New Year, it is too crowded". Well it was, but when you can get views like this, who cares?
Eat your heart out, North Yorkshire's Scarborough!

Trees no more

Trees in Malawi are disappearing at rate of knots, faster than most anywhere else in Africa. Sometimes it is for firewood (or charcoal), sometimes illegal logging/poaching organised on an industrial scale by Chinese or Mozambicans (on trial this week, verdict due tomorrow), and sometimes small scale timber. This is on my route to work and is absolutely typical; there were three good-looking trees which were brought down by a bunch of men and sawn into planks. (Click to enlarge picture)
I am impressed by their skill and ingenuity but the environmental impact, both locally and nationally, is horrendous and affects soil quality, water availability, air quality and even electricity supply.
 

How to rig a survey

While I was at the bank on Wednesday, one of the bank staff was at my office, delivering their "Christmas Card" with the bottle as shown. There was also a calendar and, wrapped in with them,  a survey sheet asking my opinion of the bank and its service!
Now, given that I don't drink whisky, which way will the survey be biased?

Flamboyant or what!

I recently sent a general letter that missd out a couple of these botanic pictures, so here they are.
The wonderful Flamboyant tree, the Jacaranda, and a bush in the Botanic Garden described as "just a flower" when I asked the gardener!
  

Sensitive sandwiches

Glad to see some of them are holding it together.
 

Cheap vaccines

Wandering casually through the street market, looking at hardware stalls, I spotted a load of vaccines for sale, of several types. Astonished, I looked more closely and found they appeared to have been used and the contents were quite glutinous, though all well in date! And why on a hardware stall?

Actually, they are vials of Bostik glue, cost 8p each (though I suspect that was the foreigner rate).
Another sticky problem solved.

Bohm's Bee-eaters

 

  A nice diversion when animals are in short supply on  a Game count.

  Mind you this one should check that his diet matches his name.

Happiness is...

...an inverter! This wonderful device with the happy smile charges the two truck batteries when the power is on and then supplies power to the mains circuits when the supply goes off. So far I have had it for nearly a week and it has kept the lights and fridge working most of the time, and enabled me to recharge my phone and laptop freely. It should cope with a small freezer too, maybe I'll get one now.
  

Did I leave the window open?

The mechanic came today to replace the wheel bearings. This afternoon it started to rain, as predicted, very heavily for quite a while, not as predicted. I can't remember at what point I recalled that I had not closed the car windows.
Of course, we all know that tropical rain comes down vertically so won't get into a car with open windows.
Pity Malawi is not tropical.
  

A dramatic warning?

A firing range warning with bullet holes to make the point?
Maybe, but a lot of notices here have holes in. One theory is that it reduces wind resistance and makes it less likely that the notice will be blown down but I favour the idea that it stops anyone stealing the notice to roof their house/toilet/annexe. I am always asked for any card or plastic packaging material for such purposes.
  

The bed that George made...and carried

George made this bed for £35 in just a few days. He said that would include delivery because he had a friend with a pickup. In fact, he and a friend carried it on their heads for about 2 hours, a distance of some 3 miles I think. He has a list of other jobs to do for me, but I wonder if I should mention repairing the bridge...
  

A bridge too far gone?

I can walk to work in about 20 minutes, avoiding roads for most of the time and crossing informal fields. This bridge has to be crossed; tall folk can walk down the centre and hold on to the side, I can't quite manage it and have to use the side bar.

It's worth doing for several reasons, including Malachite kingfishers, Hammerkop and weavers.
   

Names and roses

Malawians have a very personal approach to naming children. Apart from local language names, and English names that are similar to western ones, so far I have met:
Happy, Precious, Blessings, Gift, Comfort,
Secret, Donewell, Loveness, Fraction,
 Brighton, Lawyer and King.
  

Armchair gardening

The main highway has a central reservation with lots of shrubs; nothing unusual in that, but someone has put a lot of effort into topiary: all either armchairs or satellite dishes. Is there  a message in that?
  

Will someone posh kindly tell me how to use this?

Yes, it's a tea-strainer with a swinging filter, but does one angle it at 45' to flow off the tray, pour it one tray-full at a time and tip it into the cup, or hold the tray at right-angles to the flow so that it doesn't get involved? Life is full of these dilemmas. See the whole table below at Satemwa tea farm.