Willeke in Malawi

Memorable moments & quotes

June 23, 2009 at 10:30 (Stay in Malawi, Uncategorized)

Hai Everyone,

The internet is working for the second day, so I thought let me take the chance to update you all and write something here.

So it has been a while since I last wrote something, about a month, and I have only 2 weeks and 2 days left of my placement. And 3 weeks and 2 days of Malawi left:-(.

Last time I wrote about Petros, the Malawian eye-doctor, well he really got to know us. At one of his last nights we had a waterfight, started by Ellen and Janneke (for people who know them both, yes of course!) Marieke and I also joined in. Petros was sitting relaxed at the table, until Marieke made him part of the fun. He was really surprised and ran to the toilet. He was saying he wasn’t so wet at all, so Marieke stood in front of the door and when he opened and saw her, he screamed: “I AM, I AM, I AM!!!!” He really appreciated being treated the same. On his last night he was watching soccer somewhere with people from work and he taped his door with seven balloons saying: “We will miss you!” I was working when he left but we found out he put all the balloons in the trunk of his car.

One night we invited Maralise over for dinner and we enjoyed the food and her company. We started talking about the pork at the market and she said the goats are also very nice. She touched her, shoulder and arms and said of a female goat, the front legs are very nice! Was so funny, just difficult to describe.

The other day I was sitting on the steps in front of the house, waiting for butterflies to come, so I could capture them on a picture. Maralise was on her way back to work and stopped to talk for a second, when I made a picture of her, she acted like a butterfly (see pictures;)).

In the house there have been some new additions, Matthea and Rick, who already left as well. Matthea and I shared a room, she took leave from her work to come for 3 weeks and help Willeke Ter Haar out with her school. Rick was in between studies and decided to join and experience Malawi. We had a lot of fun with them.
In the same they where her and about the same time they left Tamara, was in the house and also left again. Tamara is just as Petros a eye doctor from Blantyre, doing a elective in Nkhoma eye hospital. Tamara is a woman with big and strong opinions and I don’t easily back down in a discussion either. However after three evenings filled with discussion, I was too tired to participate. Rick even said to her face: “You have a big mouth!”, it wasn’t meant to offend, and she wasn’t, but it was really funny. She is a lovely person and she had to fight to come where she is now. If I go to Blantyre, in my weeks left or any other time in the future I can always go to her. She went along with me and Ellen to Lilongwe and we crossed the bridge between the normal and vegetable market and she was so scared. Ellen and I needed to hold her hand and she found it amazing that we needed to pay to be allowed to cross (10 MWK=5 cent).   
There is also a medical student in the house again, Hamish, from New Zealand. He is for 8 weeks in total in the hospital. Last weekend I joined him to Senga bay, Cool runnings again, was lots of fun! Not much sun though, very high waves! Hamish has this thing for Madasi, vetcakes, oliebollen(niet zo zoet), fried buns/rolls or however you want to call them, this weekend he ate, 3 on Friday, 7 on Saturday and 3 on Sunday..just crazy. We were walking in Senga and he was like: “I smell them, just need to find them!” I will never look the same at an oliebol!
Oh and Lombani left:-(, he had to go to a health centre to finish his study, but he did not feel like leaving, and was not sure if he would return to Nkhoma, bit sad saying good bye again to a good friend.

 Ellen’s birthday was on the 8^th of June and Rick’s birthday was on the 15^th of June. For the occasion I bought some food colouring. Ellen favourite colour is blue and for Rick it is green. When Ellen makes cookies in the house she always makes them heart shaped. Therefore I had the great idea for a coffee cake and because Marie taught me how to make good butter icing (thanks!) I was able to make a beautiful bleu heart coffee cake. Besides that we had a cinnamon/apple cake and an orange cake. What went on even more that evening is that some people shouldn’t be left alone with food colouring.
For Rick I made brownies, with green icing with the red leaflike flowers that grow everywhere in Malawi (kerst sterren) because at his home they grow these flowers. The cake looked like it was meant for Christmas, Janneke made a appeltaart and I also made boterkoek. So lots of cakes in very very little time;) And this time Ellen could join Janneke in the fun of innovative ways to use food colouring…in the back of my mind I was hoping it wouldn’t go off anymore…anyway it came of easy and the next day they wouldn’t scare the cildren more than our skin already does.   

In the meantime there has also been another Dutch ‘builders’ group from Houten, to work on the renovation of the maternity ward. So that was two weeks of lots of seeing (not eating) lots of Dutch cheese, hagelslag and Rookworsten in the house.

Janneke, Ellen and Marieke, moved to the Veitch’s house. Reinnette Veitch is the manager of the guesthouse. She asked them and me, to move in their in the time she is away with her family in South-Africa. I decided to stay in the guesthouse.

3 Irish guys arrived last week and stayed at first in Sam Kabota’s (paediatrics clinical officer) guesthouse. Sam charges more than the guesthouse, and it is a lot more basic. Anyway they are now for 2 more weeks in Nkhoma, and are then going to travel in Africa.

Oh and also a memorable moment, Willeke using a virusscan and afterwards being unable to start up the computer. Yes, my computer crashed, and No, I did not back-up everthing..
The only file I had was the UBM, that most annoying and motivation draining report. So at least that is almost finished. My computer is home by the way, Cobi from the group van Houten took it home, and my father picked it up already… hopefully he and Lex will find my files. My pictures are saved by the way;)

I know I have been away long enough and that is almost time to come home, but it just feels sad. I am very happy that I can show my parents the people I have met, Nkhoma, the lake and a bit of Malawi. Because I can tell about it and show pictures, but is a feeling I have when I walk from the Veitch’s house to the guesthouse in the dark is that I feel like I am going home. The other day when I was walking with Hamish to the minibus to Nkhoma, this taxi driver asked me where are you going? And I said: “Home”, so he offered a taxi ride to the airport… Nkhoma Mountain is in sight a lot of times, also when you go to Senga Bay and that is home, unfortunately just for a couple of weeks more.

Don’t get me wrong, I will be very happy to see everyone again. But the Netherlands are just no match for Malawi. I mean an attempt on the royal family on Queensday and the PVV is the biggest winner in the elections for the European parliament, I don’t really know what is going on there, but can you blame me? Not everything is great here and yes I still get annoyed when people arrive 30 minutes later, but in the end it doesn’t really matter;-)

Okay anyway, I am going to try to resize my pictures on Ellen’s computer and upload them and I will write again I guess.

Willeke
I also added some old Senga Bay pictures of myself that Ellen made!!