Here in the Southern Hemisphere, we are nearing the end of winter. For us, that means no more nights with temps down to 54 degrees Fahrenheit. These days it’s already 60 degrees when we get up just before dawn. Soon we will be excited if it gets below 80 overnight. But between now and then we have a short little springtime: September. And there’s already evidence that spring is on its way… the mango trees are blooming!
We are back to school, and we love school! Three times this morning while working through our new books Abigail shrieked: “I love this!” It makes this homeschooling mama’s heart happy!
First up on the school roster: Naomi! Having successfully finished Preschool last year, she gleefully jumped into Pre-K. She loves hearing stories, coloring in her workbooks, and “helping” Abigail with her math.
Next up: Abigail! She flew through 1st grade last year, so is ready for the challenge of 2nd grade. She loves reading, history, math, art, geography, science, and language arts. Handwriting is about the only thing she would be happy to live without!
And last: Mom! Yes, I’ve been homeschooling Abigail formally and informally for 4 years now, but this does feel like a first for me. Naomi has moved beyond mere stories and coloring, and Abigail is at the point where she has a more rigorous academic schedule but can’t yet be very independent. So I’m a full-time teacher! Throw in extra-curricular activities and our school schedule some days runs 8am to 4pm!
Speaking of extra-curriculars, we had a couple of those today. We host a playgroup for the younger homeschooling families at our church for a couple hours on Monday mornings. It started during the school break, but all the moms agreed that playing in a group of other kids is good – a learning activity – for our kids, so we are continuing the playgroup as a regular part of the school year. When everyone’s there, it’s 14 kids and 6 moms. A fun time for the kids, and coffee and chatting for the moms!
To round out the day, Naomi joined ballet. Oh the anticipation! This picture just screams “I’m a big girl and I’m so cute!!!” It went about how almost 4 year olds usually respond to a new setting full of unknown people. Ah-hem. Let’s just say, we have a much better chance of enjoying it next week! At least she finished with a little curtesy!
Abigail’s ballet class will meet later this week, as will her writing class, and in the coming weeks hopefully swim lessons too. It’s a full school schedule this year, but we are excited about it, and enjoying the newness this week!
Electricity is an ever-present issue here in Malawi. Last year the hydroelectric production was so low by the time the rains came that we were down to about only 4 hours of electricity per day. May I remind you, we live in the capital city, not a rural village. It was a bit rough.
But over the years, we’ve become somewhat accustomed to power outages. We have had generators and put some great candle sconces down the halls. We’ve had a series of emergency lights too, but the first way I usually know the power is out is if the time display on my microwave is out. No little green numbers means no power. But isn’t this a cool microwave? I mean, how many people out there have a mirrored surface on their microwave? There wasn’t a lot of selection, and I had considered the mirror surface a drawback of this model, but I’ve since come to be good friends with it. It has taken the place of a mirror in the hall, letting me do a quick check to make sure I’m presentable as I run to get the door or the gate. It’s super-helpful to have a mirror in your kitchen!
Why is the microwave my first indicator? Because these days, pretty much everything else still works when the power goes off! Over a year ago, thankfully before last year’s extreme power cuts, we invested in an inverter system. A guy was selling the batteries at a ridiculously low price, so we jumped at the chance. I’m so glad we did!
An inverter system is basically battery back-up for your whole house. Well, whatever circuits you run through it. Originally we prioritized all the circuits related to productivity and the ability to sleep through tropical summer nights: bedside lamps, a couple sockets for fans and charging computers, and the internet router. Once we realized what a great system we had gotten, we added on one light per room, the refrigerator, and the deep freeze. The items we intentionally left off are the microwave, kettle, water heaters, and hall lights. The heating elements draw too much power, and the hall lights … well, we just like the ambiance of candles down the hall!
Our system has 8 deep cycle batteries and the control unit, which switches over to battery power so seamlessly that it doesn’t even knock us off the internet! 
The whole system lives in a wooden box that Matt built in our garage. Besides being one of the nicest back-up systems I know, the box is also a great place to hang out!
We will get lots of use out of this inverter in the coming year, I’m sure. We are just entering “blackout season,” and we have had 6-9 hour blackouts every day this week. Those 20 hour blackouts are coming, and 4 hours a day is not enough to recharge all those batteries. We’re working on a solution for that … stay tuned!
Warning: this blog post is full of 3-year-old cuteness! 💕
Every Thursday afternoon I run all our errands and go grocery shopping. Today was Naomi’s turn to come with me, while Abigail got to spend some special time with Dad. We picked up our friend Ashley and into town we went, where every street vendor wanted to sell us strawberries!
But first, since this is special “Naomi and Mom Time,” we went to my new favorite place, Round and Square.
To say that she likes the Chocolate Cloud Cake would be an understatement! The sugar high hit before she finished the piece of rich cake, so we left the rest. Yes, we walked away from some of the best chocolate cake ever… the gleam in her eye and the increase in energy, chatter, and giggles were warning enough!
Off to Akbanies culinary store next. My little helper was better than a shopping basket in the narrow aisles.
She even paid for her items and collected the receipt!
These stores look beautiful and shiny, and yes, they have wonderful things in them… with better selection than most people think we have in Africa, but this is still Africa! Ashley and I were talking about Naomi being born in Malawi, and we decided that since the term “African American” was already in use elsewhere, Naomi would have to be considered an American African. The term fits her perfectly – she feels right at home in this country of contrasts!
Part of the goal for the day was to show Ashley a few of the lesser known stores in town. As Tutlas was just around the corner, we stopped by to show Ashley the largest selection of spices in town! (And they had thyme! Yippee!)
Last up, our mainstay grocery store: Chipiku. I do about 80% of our shopping here, and even have my grocery list organized by aisle. The girls like it because I get them a little Energade (like Gatorade) and I let them ride in the cart. The cart is such an important part of shopping for them that they have serious culture shock when we go to America and they see signs on shopping carts that say kids can’t sit in the cart! We live dangerously here in Malawi!
After 3 hours of errands and adventure shopping, my helper and I are tired and ready to head home. Our last treat of the day was to drive home into a beautiful African sunset.
We have a pretty good tailor here in Lilongwe, but sometimes it just works better to fix your own clothes. Besides which, I like sewing!
Over the last couple days, I worked on tailoring Matt’s dress pants and cargo pants. If you know Matt, you’ll know he is slender. Clothes have a tendency to look baggy on him. So we fixed that!
My 1941 Singer sewing machine is pretty simple compared to modern sewing machines, but it gets the job done.
Once we have the fit right, my more modern Brother overlocker machine trims the excess and gives us a reinforced seam.
You don’t have to know how to sew to be a missionary, but it sure does help sometimes, especially when you know it will be something like a year before you can shop for clothes again! Four pairs of pants tailored, two waiting to be re-hemmed, and two more in the optional pile. One satisfied customer and a happy seamstress!
The dry season here in Malawi runs roughly from the end of April to the end of November. However we do live in the tropics, so every once in a while we get a day or two of rain in July or August. Like yesterday and today!
I would have expected about 15 minutes of light rain, but it rained fairly steadily for over an hour today! Enough that it was rushing down the gutters and pipes! 
The girls begged to put on rain coats and go splash in the puddles of our driveway, so I sent them off to have fun. Matt had a little fun too and set up an impromptu photo shoot. Here's what I got: 
And here's what he got: 
Clearly he's a better photographer than me, and I happily enjoy the benefits of that all the time! ☺️
It was getting cold outside (69 degrees F when I took these pics), so I headed back to the warm kitchen to finish dinner and make some hot chocolate for my family. 
We never know what surprises await us each day, so we enjoy them as they come – rain or shine!
What to do, what to do? At least the power is on!
We have British outlets and plugs here in Malawi, leftovers from the days when Malawi/Nyasaland was a British Protectorate country. They're big and chunky, but generally work well.
The tricky part is that we live closer to South Africa than England, so most electronics come to Malawi with South African plugs: two round prongs instead of three rectangles. They fit, but it takes a little work. You have to use a small object, say a key, to depress the safety button in the top hole so that the bottom two holes will open for the South African plug to go in the outlet. 
Don't let your children see this picture! Yes, I'm putting my keys in the outlet! But it's ok. The outlets here are switched, as in the red button next to my finger can switch the outlet off and on. And the hole my key is in is the ground, so there's no power going to that hole anyway, even if the outlet is switched on. Honestly, it took me a couple years before I was willing to do this with keys – I would always run and find a chopstick… just in case!
So with all the issues with South African plugs in British outlets, we really like it when we can get a good appliance that has a British plug. For instance, a toaster. We have had an American toaster oven for years. I love it. But, we do have to run it on a transformer here, and it only toasts 2 pieces of bread at a time. That's ok until you have more than 2 people in your toast-loving family. Enter the British toaster. 
Isn't she a beauty? Well, she is to me! When I was getting ready to go to England in May to hike Hadrian's Wall, Matt and I realized that this was our chance to get appliances with British plugs – from England! So Matt bought this beautiful red toaster, and a new hair dryer, on Amazon UK and sent them to a "parcel pick-up" (American: locker) location. After the hike, I found the parcel pick-up location near Kings Cross Station, tossed my new toaster and hairdryer in a duffel bag, and took the Underground to Heathrow to fly home. 
This pic was proof to my family that I had the toaster and was on my way home. And the extra effort has been worth it. Did I mention that we are a toast-loving family?!
Before we had kids, Matt and I did a lot of adventuring in Lilongwe and were really familiar with what was available and where to find things in town. We even adventured in town when we had only Abigail. But it's been 4 years since we really looked around the older part of town and could say we really knew what was there. So we did it today! 
We did need a few things, so headed first to Select & Save, an old favorite. This place is fascinating! It's very well organized, but there are parts and pieces, and tubes, and generators, and metal sheets, and 6 types of roofing nails, and 85 different types of hammers… EVERYWHERE in this store! Matt found the lock he needed, and I found the little screw I needed to fix my old Singer sewing machine. 
We continued through town as the streets started to fill with the morning crowd. This is seriously such an interesting part of town. I forget how much I enjoy exploring, looking for that gem in the dusty streets and crowds of people. You never know what you will find! Case in point:
Who wouldn't want to sit comfortably in the grace of God?!? And who, especially the mother of two little girls, wouldn't love a room full of ribbons?!?
The town is bustling, but many of the stores are the same as they have been for years. It was nice to know that some things stay the same, even if they have a fresh coat of paint. 
Before we headed home, we had one more piece of adventuring to do. We had heard of a new place called Round and Square, and were curious about a place that was advertised as a little coffee shop that promoted art and local artisans… in a sketchier part of town. We were pleasantly surprised to find a very nice coffee shop, filled with books on art, design, cooking, gardening, etc. 
Such a cute place! We really enjoyed it, and are hoping it stays in business for a long time! I'm already planning my next visit there!
As we drove home, Matt commented "It's places like that that keep us exploring." And he's right. Every once in a while, you do find a gem. Maybe the one you've been looking for, maybe an unexpected one. But you have to be out there to find it!
Remember summer days of drinking straight out of the garden hose? Well, we don't do that here in Malawi! We have a great water filter for our drinking water and for years we only filtered. However, about 9 months ago the city stopped treating the water for a period of time and we started researching the boil and filter option.
Ugh. Boil water every day? Not me, not in my house. I don't want to pay more for gas to boil 20 liters of water every day, and I REALLY don't want to heat up my house every day with 2 huge pots of boiling water! This is Africa, in the tropics, we're already hot enough! I'll just clean those filters again, and we should be fine! 
But then I learned the difference between how to get bacteria out of your water and how to get viruses out of your water. Our Katadyn Gravidyn filters remove something like 99.95% of all chemicals and bacteria from the water. But viruses are so small they just go straight through the filters. Boiling kills viruses. Done. End of discussion. I became a firm believer in boiling AND filtering water that day! I'm not even going to get into the details of the sewer pipe that leaked into the water main of the neighborhood just north of us… Boil and Filter is my new mantra! 
So we fill up our two 10L pots with tap water almost every evening and bring them to a boil (which takes about exactly 67 minutes). We crack the lids and let them cool overnight, and in the morning we pour the cooled, virus-free water into the top part of our two filters. Over the next couple hours, the water works its way through the filters and stores in the bottom of the unit for easy access. Is it a process? Yes. Do we have fewer tummy bugs now? Actually, yes. Do I carry the water on my head. Um, yes… a 10L pot of water is too heavy to carry in front of me without spilling, so I lift it up on top of my head to carry it across the kitchen. Sorry, no selfies of that – I'm not that coordinated! 
And that's how we get drinking water here in Lilongwe! We drink it, cook with it, and wash fruits and veggies in it. I'm thankful for the modern technology of such great filters, and for the ancient technology of fire that now rounds out our water treatment process. I do think that all that work makes the water taste just a little bit sweeter!