Category Archives: Amusing Things

Ngumbi

by Rachel

Look at what we woke up to this morning!

We call them ngumbi, but you’d probably call them termites.  After the first big rain of the season, all the termites come out of their hills and look for new places to live, preferably places that have lights, like our house. It’s been raining off and on for the past couple days, so the termites had their annual “night out” last night and found their way into our house, despite closed doors and windows, and mosquito nets on the windows.

Would you believe that the Ministry of Health actually promotes eating ngumbi as a good source of protein?  Minus the wings, of course.  I think we’ll pass this year, but I will let you know that Matt’s favorite way to eat ngumbi is with a light sprinkling of cajan seasoning…

We’re Home!

by Rachel

There’s no place like home! And I’m not just saying that because I’m from Kansas!

We got back to Malawi on October 23rd, and, despite the jet lag, we’ve enjoyed settling back in to our home over the last week and seeing so many people we love here. There’s nothing like going away to show you how much your heart is tied to a place. We love that the Lord has put Malawi in our hearts and grown our love for it and the people here over the last 3 1/2 years.  We’re home!

The winner for how to deal with jet lag: Abi.  Apparently the best way to deal with jet lag is to watch an Elmo video at 3am, while wearing sunglasses.

Matt and the Constable

by Rachel

We’re in the midst of May madness around here.  School’s about to finish for the “summer,” wedding season is starting up, and around here friends are getting ready to move or go on furlough so there are lots of good-byes.  But I couldn’t help stopping for a few minutes to post this one fun picture of Matt.  It was his birthday, and we were passing by as a friend – who will remain nameless – was getting a speeding ticket.  In fairness to our very good friend – still nameless – his clutch went out and he could only drive in 3rd gear.  But as we stopped, Brian Nameless thought it would be fun to get a picture of Matt and the constable.  =)

On the Menu

by Rachel

“It is not generally known in the Western world that insects are a very good and cheap source of protein.  Taxonomically, these insects are not far removed from shrimps which are considered a great delicacy in the West.”

Thus begins my favorite – but least used – chapter of The Malawi Cookbook. If you have any of these insects in your area and would be interested in trying a local Malawian insect dish, click on the picture below for a few recipes. And… don’t forget to floss.

Insects for Eating

Elephantiasis

by Rachel

There has been an outbreak of Elephantiasis in Malawi, so we more than willingly walked down to the local clinic and picked up some pills that will prevent it.  We won’t go into any graphic descriptions of this disease – there’s plenty of information on the internet – but suffice it to say, we don’t want to get Elephantiasis, or anything like it!

Elephants and Worms 1

We took the pills early in the morning on empty stomachs, and then marked our calendars to make this an annual family event!

Internet Screen Captures

by Rachel

We are very thankful for modern technology and the many benefits that it brings to missionaries – much faster travel times, international calling cards, and especially internet.  In the last couple weeks we’ve bought Christmas presents, borrowed electronic books from libraries in the States, researched recipes, caught up on world news, and video chatted with our parents. All on the internet.

It’s been an especially good couple weeks for internet.  Not all weeks are this good.  In fact, we keep screen captures of some of the more bizarre things that happen to our internet.

 

Failed Ping Test

The cause of most of our internet issues is a very slow connection.  In this test of data being sent from Lilongwe to Nairobi, our connection got an F.

 

Price for High Speed Internet

Could we upgrade from our “128kbps-shared-with-the-neighborhood” plan?  Well, sure, but not at these upgrade prices.  Not when we had 6Mbps for $45 a month when we lived in California.  The 6Mbps option isn’t even available to us, and if it did exist, it would probably cost $1800 a month.  No, thank you.

 

YouTube Upload

(Uploading a 3 minute video to YouTube.)

 

So our internet is slow, if we have internet at all.  We’re writing this post on a WordPress remote poster program that a friend of ours designed specifically for us.  We don’t need to be online to compose any of the post or even add pictures, we just need to have about 3 minutes of internet when we’re ready to post.  Or rather, when we have about 3 minutes of internet, THEN we post.

 

iTunes Update

Often we’ll start downloads at night when we go to bed.  Having a download manager program has helped (we use downthemall, a plug-in for the Firefox browser), because even if the download gets interrupted, it will pick up where it left off.

 

Firefox Download

We liked this one especially, because it thanked us for our patience!  They were a little off on their time estimate, but they were nice about it.

 

Video Blocked

But sometimes things just don’t come through because of where we live.  Like videos, or…

 

Google Malawi without Google Logo

Logos?  Apparently Google Malawi doesn’t get the Google logo.  Oops.

 

Too Many Inbox Messages

And sometimes EVERYTHING comes through, though we’re pretty sure we’ve never had quite that many messages in our inboxes, ever.  So if  you ever wonder why it’s taking us so long to reply to an email you sent us or why we haven’t noticed your Facebook status, we may be buried beneath 4 billion emails, or maybe our internet is down and we’re sitting on our porch enjoying the first rains.  =)  Sometimes our lack of internet is just what we need to remind us to stop and enjoy those moments in the wonderful, mostly-offline place where we live!