Staying Dry
Beetle on a Flower
Handmade Bridge over Lilongwe River
It’s Raining!
The rainy season has come and we’re all enjoying a break from the hot weather!
Abi was a little tentative at first, but then she realized that sometimes getting wet is a good thing…
and that playing with rain spouts can be a lot of fun! Â Yay for rain!!!
Internet Screen Captures
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. Â 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. Â Not all weeks are this good. Â In fact, we keep screen captures of some of the more bizarre things that happen to our internet.
The cause of most of our internet issues is a very slow connection. Â In this test of data being sent from Lilongwe to Nairobi, our connection got an F.
Could we upgrade from our “128kbps-shared-with-the-neighborhood” plan? Â Well, sure, but not at these upgrade prices. Â Not when we had 6Mbps for $45 a month when we lived in California. Â The 6Mbps option isn’t even available to us, and if it did exist, it would probably cost $1800 a month. Â No, thank you.
(Uploading a 3 minute video to YouTube.)
So our internet is slow, if we have internet at all. Â We’re writing this post on a WordPress remote poster program that a friend of ours designed specifically for us. Â 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. Â Or rather, when we have about 3 minutes of internet, THEN we post.
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.
We liked this one especially, because it thanked us for our patience! Â They were a little off on their time estimate, but they were nice about it.
But sometimes things just don’t come through because of where we live. Â Like videos, or…
Logos? Â Apparently Google Malawi doesn’t get the Google logo. Â Oops.
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!
Praying Mantis
Oh for a Full Tank of Diesel…
The fuel tank in our 1991 Surf (like a 4Runner) hasn’t been full since the 26th of September. Â That was the day that Rachel and Abi were headed into Lilongwe and happened to pull onto the main road behind a fuel truck, which they followed to a gas station. Â After waiting 2 hours for the fuel to unload, they drove away with a full tank of diesel.
That was also the last time we’ve pulled into the gas station and right up to the pump. Â Even in September, being in the “number one position” was a good way to make people jealous. But once they saw that Rachel was waiting with a toddler, the other drivers didn’t put up a fight. In fact, they were really friendly.
And Abi did great! Â She played with sticks, made faces at the attendants, and was great entertainment for everyone in line!
We’ve had a fuel shortage here in Malawi since April. Â At first it was usual to wait in line for an hour or two, but not usually more than that. Â Now… well, people wait in line overnight, sometimes for several days.
We’ve done the overnight thing, and we’ve taken our car to the station at 5am more than a few times. Â There’s only so long you can wait though before you give up and decide to try again another day. Â Last week, Matt spent another morning in the fuel line, following a rumor that this station was expecting a delivery. Â After 3 hours, he texted Rachel: “The tanker is here!” Â Two minutes later he texted the bad news and took this picture:
PETROL!?! Â Hours in line for the wrong fuel… Matt gave up his place in line and came home, knowing he had enough fuel to get home, but probably not enough to get to another gas station. Â So we changed tactics.
Our night guard is willing to spend part of his days looking for diesel for us. Â We pay him a bounty for every jerry can of fuel he purchases for us. Â This means he’s usually in a crowd of men – like the one pictured above – waiting at a gas station from 7am to 4pm. Â It’s getting dirty though… he just brought a jerry can of fuel to us today and said that the attendant refused to fill the container. Â The attendant put 20 liters of fuel in our 25 liter jerry can and demanded the remainder of the cash as his “tip.” Â A nearby policeman did nothing to stop the extortion – probably because he needed fuel too. The amount that the attendant took from our night guard was the equivalent of 2-3 days’ good wages here. Â This is becoming all too common.
We have enough fuel now to pick up Rachel’s parents at the airport in a week and a half. We’re saving the rest by walking as much as we can: Rachel is buying food in the neighborhood shops, and Matt takes a backpack to the office now. Besides enjoying the exercise, we’re building good habits. The price of diesel went up again this week… to $8 a gallon!
Color Blind
If you’ve been following the blog for a while, you might be thinking to yourself: There are a lot of white people in these pictures – are the Floreens really in Africa? Yes we are. Â =) Â And yes, there are a lot of white people here.
Lilongwe, where we live, is the capital of Malawi and is definitely an international city. We’re not exactly on the same level as Bombay, London, or Hong Kong, but we do have an international airport and you can get Indian, Chinese, Ethiopian, AND Italian food here. More importantly, as the capital city, Lilongwe is the hub for almost every local and international government, aid, and development organization in the country. Because Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, there are scores of international organizations here, of every flavor, bringing in aid workers, volunteers, staff, and consultants from their own countries. We see this in our church. In addition to Malawians, we have Nigerians, Indians, Chinese, Koreans, Americans, Brits, Germans, South Africans, Zimbabweans… Some are here for only a few weeks and some have lived here all their lives. Some were born here because their grandfather started a sugar plantation in Rhodesia 80 years ago. Some will stay here only long enough to finish a construction job.
But one of the most striking things we have discovered is a forgotten people group: white Africans. A few months ago Matt was asked to officiate at a memorial service for a middle-aged white lady who was born and raised in Malawi, and later married and settled in Scotland. The service in Malawi was mostly for her childhood friends who still live here. Matt asked the sister what songs should be included in the service. Â She thought for a minute and declared that none of the friends would know any church songs because “no one comes to Africa to save white people.”
Does that make you stop and think? It certainly gave us pause.  I (Rachel) will admit that I had been a little shy of putting too many pictures of white people on the blog.  I felt like for every picture of a white person I had to have at least one, if not two, pictures of “real Africans.” I wanted to make sure that everyone who read our blog knew that we were interacting with “real Africans” and not just hiding away in the ex-pat (foreigners) community.  But many of those white people ARE real Africans.
So with ex-pats and white Africans, we have a lot of white people in our church. Â They (we) make up almost half of the congregation.
Someone once asked our church’s pastoral staff what demographic they were targeting. Â Their answer: sinners. Â The Malawians who teach a children’s Sunday school class, the white Zambian single mom who is a new believer, the German missionary with financial trouble, and the American Embassy family who are new to town… like us, they all desperately need God’s grace. Â Those are the people we love, the people who live in Lilongwe. They are our demographic.
Things That Make You Go Hmmmm….
Here’s a few funny things we’ve run into lately:
What would you do? Â We interpreted it as a green light. Â Apparently we weren’t the only ones with a green light, but we all made it through the intersection ok. Â Another dilemma we frequently face is traffic lights that don’t work at all. Â The first few times, we waited for a very long time. Now, we have a rule of thumb for broken stoplights: “Black is the new green.”
This beetle was kicking around on our front steps the other morning. Â Abi really wanted to play with it, but she still studies most things with her mouth, so we just watched it from a distance.
Monkey Gland Sauce, no thank you! Â We’ve heard it’s pretty good and that it doesn’t come from monkeys, but we still don’t keep it as a staple in our pantry. Â Apparently in this regard we are still very American!
And finally, borax. Â Right next to the meat spices. Â Not even close to the laundry supplies. Â Um, folks, let’s just hope no one gets confused about their spices!