Those of you who read this blog carefully will remember that the October 15th post made mention that we came back a couple days after we thought we would. And yes, there’s a story there…

Brian dropped us off at the Lilongwe airport on Saturday morning, all packed and ready to fly back to the States. When we handed the tickets to the clerk at the counter, he looked at them for a minute and then said “So, you were supposed to fly yesterday?”

“No, today.”

“No, yesterday.”

“No, today.”

At this point, all we could think was: This is not looking good! We’ve collectively traveled to over 40 countries, and this had never happened to either of us. Was he serious? Was our ticket for yesterday, for Friday?! Yes, it sure was.

The clerk was very kind. He pointed out that the schedule we had received was confusing, and he understood why we had misread it. But the fact still remained: we had missed our flight by 24 hours.

So off we went to the little office in the airport that services Kenya Airways customers. I should point out that all of our travels up to this point had been perfectly smooth – no lost luggage, no significant delays, and even good food! I was starting to wonder what the deal was with people talking about African time, about things not working, and about needing to adjust my expectations for a slower life. All of a sudden, beginning in the Kenya Airways office, all of the Africa-ness of our trip caught up with us, in a three-part adventure.

Adventure #1
We had definitely missed Friday’s flight, but it was possible that we could still get on that day – Saturday’s – flight. It would cost $50 apiece to change our tickets, and the clerk said that we would have to be on a waiting list for the flight from Nairobi to London. We thought about this for a few minutes. If we didn’t get on the flight out of Nairobi, we’d be stuck in the Nairobi airport for about 35 hours. Between the cost of a visa, the level of crime, and the general state of nothingness in the airport, 35 hours is a really long time to be in Nairobi. We decided to go for it though, to at least get a start on our trip. Twenty minutes later, between an ATM without internet connection and a full airline waiting list, we realized that we weren’t getting anywhere that day. I grinned and told Matt: “I actually like adventures like this.” He grinned back: “Me too!”

The clerk told us that we could get all the flights from Lilongwe to Nairobi to London to LA if we booked them for tomorrow and found a place to stay overnight. He couldn’t book them for us though, and told us we’d have to get to the Kenya Airways office in the city to do that, and the office was to close in 2 hours, at noon.

Adventure #2
Brian was our only hope for both of these problems. If we could get in touch with him, we could ask to stay another night and see if he could help us find the Kenya Airways office in town. Our first task was to get in touch with him. Brian had made sure that we had change with us when he dropped us off, just in case we would need to use the pay phone to call his cell phone. We confidently took off in search of a pay phone. We found one, but it only took phone cards. After a little investigating, we discovered that no one in the airport actually sold phone cards. Hmmm. Matt eventually found a nice lady who let him use her cell phone to call Brian. Brian, of course, was so gracious to turn right around and come back to pick us up. (Thanks again Brian!)

Adventure #3
Our last adventure was to make it to the Kenya Airways office in time to make the ticket changes. We drove straight to the city and eventually found the office complex. Brian loaned us the cash to make the changes, and we had it all taken care of with 15 minutes to spare before the office closed! All the changes had been made, and we were set to fly out on Sunday, only a couple days later than we were supposed to.

As embarrassing as it is to admit that we missed our flight by 24 hours, we’re so glad we did. We were able to spend more time with the Biedebach family, to go to church a second Sunday, and we had some of the best conversations and connections with people in those 2 days we “weren’t supposed to be there.” God knows what He’s doing, and we’re so glad He does. We’ll take those adventures any day.

We’ve had a couple weeks to recover from jet lag, and time to catch-up on life here at home. Now I have to catch up on blogging! I have lists of categories to blog on now, as our recent trip to Malawi gave me so much to think about, and so many things I want to share.

First of all, wildlife. Everyone knows that animals and bugs are different in Africa from what we’re used to in the US. Here are a few of our friendly (and some not-so-friendly) encounters:

Mosquito netting. No mosquitos in this picture, but the netting tells the story. Every night we untied the little slip knots to let the mosquito netting down around our bed. This makes for grand entrances and exits, and you do kind of feel like royalty. But the best part: sleeping soundly knowing that you won’t be awakened by annoying mosquitos buzzing around your head!

Yes, they do eat mice-on-a-stick. Matt asked a Malawian friend what was left when you finished eating the mice. The friend looked confused, so Matt offered suggestions: bones, teeth… Oh no, not quite. “Just two sticks!” They eat the whole thing: teeth, fur, tail – all of it. To help you feel slightly better about this, I should tell you that they do boil them in salt water, remove the intestines, and then let them dry in the sun until they’re essentially jerky. My favorite part of the picture is that Brian pulled these mice out of a pizza box in their freezer. Thanks Brian, but I’m going to be a little hesitant if you ever offer me frozen pizza!

There are quite a few cows and goats wandering around. There is always someone watching them, but they do seem to wander where they like, including on the roads. She looks like a nice cow, though. Maybe I could get a cow! Hmmm.

This is the famous “chop-chop” spider, as it’s called in Malawi. We spent quite a bit of time trying to find a more official name for him, and the closest we could get is the huntsman spider. They’re fast, they’re large (that’s a regular sized piece of paper!), they’re hairy, and the ones we saw had pinchers. We killed 4 or 5 of these… my husband is so brave!

And last, and least, the infamous water buffalo. This is a hard post for me to write. I have bad news. There are NO water buffalo in Malawi. In addition to being brave, my husband is also very sweet. He ran back to a little curio shop on the side of the road and bought the above pictured water buffalo for me. So, I do have a water buffalo, just not one that will assist in the cheese-making process. I think he’ll be my new cheese mascot.

I want a buffalo!  It all started a couple months ago… Matt was talking to Brian Biedebach, mentioning that both Matt and I love pickles, so we might need to plant some dill and garlic in Malawi to make our own pickles.  Brian said we’d be better off making cheese than pickles.  What?  No cheese in Malawi?  Well yes, they said, there is cheese, but it’s really bad.  Uh-oh.  How are we going to make pizzas for the youth group?  And what about Mexican food? So we started thinking about cheese.  Somebody has to make the cheese, so we should be able to do it, we figured.  After seven gallons of curdled milk down the toilet, we finally had a pound of good mozzarella.  Visions of gouda and colby jack cheeses… But mozzarella was a good start. 

Now to make it the best mozzarella.  Ever heard of Mozzarella di Bufala?  Yep, that’s buffalo mozzarella, and it’s good!  If you look in a cheesemaking book here in the States, they pretty much say “Oh, it’s good.  But you can’t make it here because you can’t get a supply of buffalo milk.”  BUT – they have buffalo in Africa!  Water buffalo. 


So began the desire to get a water buffalo.  And here are my additional circumstantial justifications:
1)      The African Water Buffalo is on the endangered species list, so someone needs to look out for them.
2)      I could sing the Veggie Tales song and it would be true, so long as mine is slow.  But I can only sing it to you if you get your own water buffalo, and yours is fast. 
3)      I think it would be great for making friends in Malawi! 
4)      Matt and I are both lactose intolerant, so we can have buffalo’s milk, but not cow’s milk.
5)      They can fight off lions.  Really.  National Geographic said so. 

I keep telling Matt that these – in addition to cheesemaking opportunities – are great reasons for getting a water buffalo. He’s not convinced. Yet. But he said maybe I should get some feedback from the blog. So now it’s up to you. Yea or Nay on the water buffalo?