Wax removal?

A very old Kudu grandmother looks a bit resigned to the attentions of the Red-billed Oxpecker, and yes, it did go inside her ear. Parasite removal is thought to be beneficial.
  

Way of the Cross

Starting at St Joseph's in Chilimoni township

The way winds over the Michiru foothills to the summit cross (look carefully or click to enlarge)

past 14 iron crosses with bronze sculptures

to the final plain cross.

A hazy view of Blantyre in wet season. St Joseph's twin towers visible to the right.

Recycled lawnmower

Some of the kids who wave and call out to me every time I walk or drive past. They recently acquired two lawnmower frames to push around.

Hospital Fire

This post is not amusing but it is also not a tragedy.

Somewhere down the page, I posted items from Mangochi District Hospital, where we were due to take students next week.
Sadly, on Sunday there was a major fire caused by an electrical surge after a blackout. The out-patient area caught fire and is gutted. Family and maternity clinics were lost. The locals and staff tried to put the fire out but the town does not have fire-fighting equipment, so a whole building was lost.
Mercifully, no staff or patients were hurt and the rest of the hospital is OK. (The pharmacy store is on the right of the picture and the main pharmacy is just behind it, even closer to the flames. The wards are further away.)

60 years is a lot of time (pieces)

Yesterday, my watch stopped and I wanted to replace the battery.  Watch-repairers are to be found interspersed with tailors and shoe-shiners along Haile Selassie Street so I beetled along there to ask them to open the watch and replace the cell.
Sadly, the youngsters plied their pliers and failed to budge it.

Not really wanting to buy a new watch, I asked around last night and was told of "a little old man who sits near the steps" , so I went again today and found Mr. Waziri.

It took a long time (including waiting 40 mins for the shop where he stored his vice to be opened) and a lot of effort with his Swiss watch-opening tools, but it gave me time to chat and watch some high-speed games of advanced-level Bao. (I felt declining to take part was just sheer common sense.)

It turns out that Waziri has been repairing watches since 1958, which is indeed a lot of time-pieces...
   

Breakfast in Liwonde

Eating breakfast in the lodge at Liwonde can be a hazardous thing. Here is the anti-monkey patrol armed with water cannon

... and here is the planning committee working on a flanking movement

Perils of life

  

Er... there are crocodiles in this river. And all for scraping a living.

District work

Special facilities at a district hospital in Mangochi.

New bicycles for village workers (and an old bed frame).

Isolation facilities for examining suspected cholera cases

Official advice

Maternity ward

More or less potholes

Two posts below, I discussed the state of the roads. I am happy to provide an update, and even happier that there are fewer potholes to report on. (I know the title should be fewer, but it's a pun...)
I am hoping that this will be the final episode of a trilogy and not part of a quartet.

Not elegant but effective now they have bedded down a bit.

Much better!

Grit on top of mud. When spread out it looks OK but hasn't been rolled and has cut the road to one car width instead of two. We'll see what happens when it rains.

An inflationary tale

Slow punctures are common here; mostly nails in the tread that are fixed by Kwik-Fit for about £1.80 a go. When I filled-up with petrol at Zomba, an hour from Blantyre, the front left was looking a bit floppy but not too bad. The Puma garage didn't have a working airline but they did have a boy with a stirrup pump, a bit of hose-pipe and a plastic bag to make a seal. He gave the pump some wellie while his friend held the pipe on the valve and the tyre reinflated to some unknown pressure.

He then pronounced that the valve was leaking and dribbled some water on it to prove the point; I was a bit dubious and decided to head for Liwonde and then Mangochi where there might be air-lines and pressure gauges.

All was well when I arrived and so I felt justified and parked-up for the night.

Next morning was another story; one clearly deflated tyre too soft to drive on. I was with colleagues and decided to do our work before coming back to change the wheel and get the valve replaced in the afternoon. But at noon, when we came back to change the wheel, behold there was a fully-inflated tyre!

A university driver emerged from under a mango tree where he had been waiting for someone, and claimed the credit. His car had an air pump powered from a car cigarette lighter, and he had seen the problem and decided to deal with it. 

Now, if I'd believed the man in Zomba, I'd have missed the low of deflation and the subsequent greater high of reinflation. Discuss.

   

Potholes

I get a bit blase about potholes (chuck holes to my American audience) but they certainly can be irritating.  Now the army/council blew up the bridge to my road, the only way out is a twisty road with an impressive pothole count.



Potholes start roundish (but with sharp edges which makes them worse for the car than dirt tracks).








Occasionally (just once actually) one might find an African Land Snail (foot for size comparison).

Periodically, enterprising people fill holes with mud or with brick bits and then hold out a bowl for tips. The benefits are welcome but not long-lasting.












Today, official repairers started by making the holes square and then they poured in grit and tamped it down.












This is when it started to rain again, so I guess there will be more stages tomorrow.














Meanwhile, The road right next to the house hasn't had much tarmac for some time.
















Indeed one car got completely stuck in the mud when trying to visit us. It was about this spot, but this photo was in dry season.












But maybe the arrival of heaps of grit is cause for hope...

Under a Baobab

It seems David Livingstone was fond of camping under Baobab trees. This one is where he contemplated the Kapichira falls he couldn't pass.
  

Greater Kudu

And who are you looking at?

Roads and quagmires

Once upon a time there was a badly rutted dirt road across the campus and so a grader was brought to make it smooth(ish). Sadly, it rained the next night, and it rained a lot! The freshly smoothed road became a quagmire.

Car leaves the mud-covered tarmac to enter the quagmire.

Two days later, there is sunshine and the mud has dried, so the grader comes back.

That very afternoon, it rained....

Pelekani pelekani

After 6 children and 12 grandchildren, the man who sells me tomatoes has married his wife, 38 years after "taking her from the village".

Most of the reception is taken up with pelekani pelekani, the giving of money to the couple. This is an extended affair where a DJ and master of ceremonies exhorts people to give generously, calling up small groups at a time (neighbours, wife's relatives, church friends, etc etc) to dance up and throw a lot of small denomination notes in the general direction of a collecting bowl.

Since no-one has enough small notes, those that are thrown are collected-up and re-cycled through money changers at the side.

Collecting the small notes
 and trading large notes for small ones

        


 Everyone can dance; young, grandparents, but babies stay asleep.

The MC welcomes the couple

I think I'll wait

When I eventually got to my haircut appointment, I asked after Ann, the old lady who used to do men's hair. "She's had a stroke", they said, "but she came in last week to see us and she can stand upright now. She should get better in a few months and then she can come back to work".

"Isn't she getting old enough to retire?", I asked.

"Why would she do that?, she's only 73!"
  

A burning issue

Surely I am not the only one to find the idea of an incinerator being in a burnt-down building somewhat amusing?

Actually not that amusing, on account of the smell in adjacent buildings, and a possible health and safety issue or two.
Today the building is being demolished. A proper incinerator is being built elsewhere.
  

Germany, by Malawians

We sent four students on an exchange visit to Germany. They remarked on four things:

1. The food was very varied

2. Even though there was plenty of power, people still turned off lights. (See next post below)

3. There was no litter.

4. Germans are time-conscious.

As a blog-writer, I am reminded that what we observe may say more about ourselves...

Too much for Livingstone

From both sides, here is the Kapichira hydroelectric power station. David Livingstone tried to get up the waterfalls in his boat (before the dam, when there was water!) and failed the first time but went around it a few years later.
Now the River Shire (pronounced Shirree) is the source of 98% of Malawian electricity and this is one of three power plants on it. Only 12% of the country are connected and even those of us who are, have a rota of  8h of power followed by 24h of nothing.
So why, at work, does no-one switch off the lights when they leave the room??!!