Safari to Tukuyu

tractor ride home!


Kids at Itete Jubilee Children's Program


Today Marty and I woke up at 3am, yes 3AM to make it to the 4am bus trip. Well ok, it was at 5am, our mistake, (oops! who needs an extra hour of sleep, right?) but anywho we got on for the 2 hour trek to our market! What inspired this trip? We couldn't handle going on a month with no more jam and margarine. Two hours for this? You don't realize how important these things are until you eat them for your meal for breakfast on a daily basis. Granted we got a few other things (cocoa powder, curry powder, apples, cucumbers, black pepper ok many things we can't get in our local Lawangwa market! You have no idea how excited I was to see BLACK PEPPER! oh how I missed you!), we had a fun adventure. Let me tell you how it started:

We arrived and thought, hey it's 7am, let's get breakfast at this restaurant. "Do you have Spanish eggs?" (looking at the menu) "No." "Do you have cocoa?" "No." "Do you have any eggs?" "No." "Do you have any breakfast food?" "No." "What do you have?" "Sambura and coffee." Wow, ok, so that's what we had, well Marty had the latter. Sambura is a fried tortilla with meat inside. It was tasty at least!

Next we went into the market to start our shopping. Yes! We first got notebooks and pencil sharpeners. Then we headed over to the Western Store to get our prized possessions. Sophia, the saint, (ok duka worker) sent a boy to get any other ingredients we needed she didn't have. He went a couple times and I got so excited when he came back with first: yeast then: black pepper! Oh man. It's also interesting how the whole market works together. If a vendor doesn't have the right change for a customer, they ask for the neighboring duka to give them some money. And here, she didn't have yeast and black pepper, so she just gets it from someone else. Hm.

Anyway, after this and buying a bunch of kitanges, we went back to the Konde Dioses, which is the Lutheran Church headquarters for the area. We were able to leave our things and shop for more. I was very happy to them! It made buying food without a heavy box and bag much easier. We then got beautiful big garlic and green peppers, coconut, and...ok I won't bore you to tears. But I was excited to get cooking oil! Only 90cents. It was sold in an old Kilimanjaro water bottle. The US would never pass this in food inspection. :)

Our trip back home was a bit more adventurous. We got on to a full bus, meaning the number of people sitting (all the seats) were also standing. We got to stand, then a gentleman didn't let me stand and switched with me. He actually was headed to Manow as well with Marty and I so he became a nice travelling buddy. He explained the region as we were riding the very BUMPY road. Oh my goodness. The route back took 3 hours and poor Marty stood the whole time minus 20 minutes. We got to Lwangwa, bought the weekly necessities of tomatoes, onions, avocados and eggs with Boaz' (our travel companion) ever present assistance and headed to Manow. Halfway up, we saw a tractor pulling a cart and I eyed Boaz to get us a ride with the man. Farmer style and all we did! How glorious, with all our shopping goods, school supplies and kitanges. We road into Manow and saw a glimpse of the Manow vs. Lwangwa soccer game (whom we beat 3-1!) Boaz bid us farewell and gave us the things he carried for us and we made our way home. Whew! 6pm, 15 hours later and we're home safe!

We finished up with a delicious meal of spaghetti, and topped it off with brownies with the western food I got today. Yipee! Joshua and then Jacob joined us because they can't get enough of brownies! Jacob even said he'd come back for more tomorrow. :) Hopefully I don't finish them off.

Next weekend is the trip to Matema. I'm excited! It's on Lake Malawi and Joshua, Jacob, Marty and I will be riding motorcycles down. I can't wait to swim, possibly snorkel, see my Swedish friends from the Jubilee and have a fun weekend with the funniest and funnest teachers at Manow!