Marriage

I find it amazing how quickly I am getting used to life here.  Saturday afternoon is complete chaos in town, particularly at the minibus station (basically the side of the road near one of the local supermarkets).  Minibuses don’t leave until they are full, there must be at least 40 of them lined up, reversing into spaces way too small, arriving and leaving in all directions.  The driver of each one peeps the horn constantly, whilst hanging out of the window, waving and shouting the destination of the bus, they also have conductors, or rather guys that encourage you to get on their bus rather than anyone else’s and collect your fare at some point during the journey, they too are all shouting and waving.  At the same time you have traffic trying to drive up and down the road, with varying degrees of patience, street vendors banging on the windows trying to sell a bag of ice (or more often water), cassava, strawberries, Irish (potatoes to you and me) or whatever – all this is going on in the heat and dust and is completely unremarkable – Lilongwe life!

A further slice of Lilongwe life is delivered at very frequent intervals throughout the working day.  People wander into the office, selling all manner of things.  Today’s combination was oranges, lettuce and then a book seller.  The latter arrived in the office, very politely sat down and said ‘Mwadzuka bwanji’ to each of us individually, and then sat quietly waiting until eventually someone asked if they could help.  At this, she fished 2 hard backed books out of her bag.  I was sorely tempted to buy ‘Highly Effective Marriages’ but couldn’t find any advice for women who’d left their husbands behind to live in Africa for 4 months!  Sorry Pat, we will have to keep making that bit up!  What was in there was an array of usefully entitled chapters like ‘Are men’s brains normal?’ ’21 ways to love your wife’ and ‘Deciding who submits to whom’!!! Incidentally, I didn’t bother reading the first – given I already know the answer.  The second involved things like getting home on time (most disappointing) and I was too busy spluttering to read any further on the third!

Anyhow, that’s way too much blabbing and my Kindle beckons …..