I (Keah) am back in the U.S.A. I returned for a short vacation for a family wedding… My family pulled together enough money for me to return, but sadly not enough for both. So I arrived Wednesday June 13. I was very busy with bridal showers, parties, digging around in our (once believed to be organized) packing to find things to take back with me, visiting family all over the state, and the wedding itself and the day before I was to fly out (six days later) my mom had scheduled me an appointment with my gynecologist upon my request.
The doctors found a 7.5 cm ovarian cyst, so the endless phone calls began, trying to reach Peace Corps Office of Medical Services (OMS), my in Country Doctor to find out what we should do. The next morning OMS told me I was to be put on medical hold, stay here and have the surgery done as soon as possible. So I called Bryan who was still in our village to tell him I could not come back yet. The outpatient surgery was last Thursday, June 21. I have since been recovering and taking it easy.
Yesterday we talked with OMS again and they told us they want me to have a two week recovery here so… I will be here till around July 5.
Let me show and tell you a little about our home in Malawi Africa. Our house is a simple 2 bedroom a storage room and a living/dinning room. The walls are brick with a tile roof held up by blue gum tree poles (termite infested ones). Every room has one window (except the living/dinning room which has two). All the windows have bars on them. The doors all have locks and they each have a different key. The keys look so cool the are the large skeleton keys! They are not fun to carry around though… We have three small brick and grass thatched buildings behind our house. One is the kitchen where we cook over a three stone fire, a bafa or bathing room where obviously we bath (but with a basin and cup) and a chimbuzi a.k.a. toilet a.k.a. hole in the ground. Here are some pictures to help you see…
These first two pictures show the back of and behind our house. You can see the original path of bricks to our bafa (the small building we bath in). The poles in the ground are the beginning structure of the gazebo Bryan built with the help of Mr. Liwonde. Below you can see what the area looked like when I left two weeks ago. The gazebo complete only missing all the plants to vine up it. The single brick path now fills under the gazebo. There is also a drying rack for dishes in front of our kitchen. Behind the gazebo you might be able to see a short fence without a door on it, this is our kitchen garden. The tree you can see is a mature masow (I have no idea how to spell it right and I do not know the English name for it) tree. It is producing its small tart fruits that taste like crab apples only smaller.
These next two pictures show you the before and after of behind our bafa where the bathing water drains out to. Originally it was just a small pit. Bryan made the pit much larger and made a horse shoe shaped mound of dirt around it on which he planted banana and papaya trees. The pit in the middle we also put the leaves we sweep from the yard so it is our compost pile.
The next two images are of the North West corner of the yard. A smaller sweeter type of mango tree now holds our laundry line. Bryan also built an herb garden in the shape of a spiral for easy watering and care. We had extra papaya trees and so we planted them along the fence.
These photos show our current food storage on our small table and chairs. We have ants very badly and so we have to keep everything that we want to eat off the floor. We got a matt to set on the floor and eat on, but we are both tired of sitting on the floor all the time and look forward to when we can use our chairs to sit on!
We are having a food cabinet built so once we get it we will move all the food into it and we will use our table and chairs. We also had a book shelf made for all our books and papers. It was the first piece of furniture we got for our home, next the food cupboard, then something for our clothing, a couch or cushioned chair, and a bed…
Feel free to leave comments or questions, I will try to respond or even post more picture in the next few days.
