Hacktivate

Not much writing in this post - just pictures of our home and garden. Enjoy!

Here is sort of a side view of our house and our two cars - a Nissan doublecab and a Mitsubishi Pajero.


Our driveway, with George, our guard/soon-to-be gardener enjoying his new
watering can I just bought at Shop-Rite.



View onto the front section of our garden from the Khonde, or patio
area where we eat most meals. That is my favorite monkey under the
monkey brain tree.


The wild part of our garden!  This will soon be our vegetable
garden right outside where Georgina, George, George Junior and Georfrey
live (family photo to follow soon hopefully!)


View from under the monkey brain tree onto our patio area.  The doors and windows behind me open into our main living room.


Our bedroom - notice the giant mosquito net to protect against malaria
(which everybody not on antimalarials seems to have right now)!

20 minutes ago I was tweaking a NSIS installer that I wrote when I got
a phone call from a guy named Mandira. He said that he had a broken
flash memory card and was wondering if I could fix it for him. He said
he had received my phone number from my wife, so I told him I probably
could not fix it but if we wanted to have me look at it he should
come over to my house. He said he would be here in 5 minutes. And
indeed he was. He was a really nice guy, but I was unable to help him.
He lost all of the data he needs for a board meeting next week. I asked
him how he knew my wife, and he said he didn't but that someone had
told him that the husband of someone at OIBM knew how to recover data.
You see, a week after we arrived in Malawi the laptop that Claudia was
given had a hard disk crash, and a ton of crucial data was on the disk.
I told her to not let anybody mess with it until I could boot Knoppix
on it. The IT staff was worried that I was going to open the case and
void the warranty. When I explained I could do it all without using a
screwdriver, they let me do it. Knoppix helped me get 99.9% of the data
off of the computer (which a month later is still in the shop). OIBM's
IT staff want me to show them my tricks (just booting Knoppix, then
copying data over a network or onto a USB drive) but we haven't gotten
around to it yet. Apparently, though,  my reputation has gotten
around. Too bad I couldn't have fixed this guys USB drive, but then
again, having strangers calling for IT help could get to be distracting.

Our garden is full of all sorts of delights. It is big - about 70
meters wide and 70 meters long, which apparenlty is about a hectare. We
have lots of fruit trees including a mango, a banana, and a monkey
brain (???) tree. There is a tall section of bamboo, and flowers pretty
much all over the place. Our vegetable garden is pretty rough, but our
herb garden is just outside our kitchen and really pretty impressive.
Rosemary, mint, oregano, chives, and lots of smelly, tasty things we
haven't been able to identify yet.
It is also the home to quite a few creatures that I have managed to see, and tons more that I have yet to see.

You
have already met Ted, our black mamba. You might recall the black
mamba's description from Kill Bill volume 2. Quentin exaggerated by
saying you have just 15 seconds to live after being bitten, but it is
the fastest most dangerous snake in the world. So that's Ted, and now
he's dead yo yo yo.

A few days ago my gardeners came to my office
window telling me that there was a toretoy here. I thought it was
another person at the gate ready to show me their references and ask if
they could be my cook. But no, there was a marvellous tortoise in the
middle of the lawn hiding in his shell. Eventually he came out and
wandered back to his home in the flower bed next to our wall. At one
point he went into his shell near some rocks, and it was impossible to
tell the difference between it and the rocks. Hence I have just decided
to name him Rockie the tortoise.

Not
far from Rockie's home lives Boy George. I am pretty sure Boy George is
a chameleon, but Georgina thinks he is a monitor lizard. We had a
monitor lizard at Ufulu Gardens, and they look like fat snakes with
legs, and Boy George has way more style than that. In the picture he is
pretty green, but I think it is because he had just been on the lawn
when I took his picture. He is about two feet long and mostly hangs out
on the trunk of our monkey brain tree. On his tree he seems pretty
content, and happy to have his picture taken.
Amp is our three
legged toad. He lives in the drain between our garage and kitchen. He
mostly comes out at night, but this picture was taken when his home was
disturbed by a stick meant to be probing Dead Ted.

Of
course there are tons of birds around. They seem quite a bit more
active and noisy than birds back home. This goes for the little birds
with long white tails as well as the gigantic crow like things that
look like they are wearing white scarves (white necked ravens according
to my guidebook). It will be quiet, and then 10 birds will all arrive
together going about their business. We put out some stale bread, but
they don't seem interested - a stark contrast to the ducks, geese and
swan we fed from out balcony in Oxford.

We
also have lots of snails. These are huge snails - about 4-6 inches
long. They slime up our tree trunks and leaves. I am thinking about
referring to them collectively as the Jabbas - but I am open to
suggestions.

Yesterday, we picked up a propane camping stove from Claudia's boss so
that we can cook some food while we are waiting to buy a stove. Last
night, George, our Guard carried the tank into the garage. This morning
I went out in my sandals to carry it inside. I brought the very heavy
thing in and set it up, and soon realized that I must have left the gas
line in the truck. I went out to the garage to look for the gas line,
and was surprised to see a gas line coiled up on the floor. Except it
wasn't a gas line - it was a snake! It had been resting underneath the
propane tank, just inches from where my bare toes had been when I
lifted the tank away. I grabbed my camera and took its picture, then I
went looking for Lazarro, our gardener, whom I figured would be well
equipped to kill it. But George had already killed it by the time I got
back - apparently with his night stick. They tell me it was a small
black mamba - dangerous, poisonous, and according to Jackson our
landlord - rare. Somehow I am not comforted.

It must sound laughable from far away, but being in charge of the
domestic staff, aka servants, is a bit overwhelming. I feel like I have
just been thrust into a middle management role. Negotiating pay,
benefits, schedules, procuring required supplies and a lot of other
activities make it feel as if you are running a business. From my
worker's perspective that is what it is. Talk about blurring the
distinction between work and home. Our housekeeper, her husband, two
kids and her sister all moved into our place yesterday. Their little
home is separate from ours, but it is still close enough that you never
forget that there is always somebody else there with you. And also, if
you have to fire someone, then there is no social security safety net
for them to fall into.

And it gets weirder. Lazarro, our gardener speaks no English. He came
highly recommended from a guy from the Red Cross who was moving to
Zimbabwe. So I invited Lazarro to come and work, and I gave him what
amounted to a 10% raise compared to what he had been earning before.
This was all done through a security guard acting as translator.
Lazarro was so happy to hear about his new wage. But this 10% raise
means about $4 more per month for Lazarro (he gets $35/month). The day
Lazarro arrived I asked him what he needed to do his job, and together
with George our guard, he made the list you see in the picture. As I
write this, Lazaroo is mowing our lawn, with a push lawnmower - we have
a big lawn and he has been at it all day. Since it is my first day
here, and also to thank George for killing the snake, I took them each
a cold coke during lunch. But if I think about it, that Coke, which
costs about 50 cents, is roughly the equivalent of half a day's wages
for Lazarro. That would be like your boss bringing you a bottle of Dom
Perrignon to drink up during your coffee break.
I hate to pay somebody barely more than a dollar a day to work so hard.
But that is a generous wage for gardeners in Malawi, so that is what we
are doing.

As I was moving boxes and boxes of our material goods into our house, I
was confronted with a strange site. Walking through my backyard, and
then next to me were two women. Two unknown women, walking through your
gated and guarded compound would be a strange incident by itself. But
these women each had what must have been at least fifty pounds of
firewood in the form of long branches each about 5-10 feet long bundled
together and balancing on top of their heads. They looked about 16
years old, and one also happened to have a baby strapped to her back.
Despite my utter surprise and amazement, I said good morning to them
and then asked what they were doing. She casually replied, "Collecting
firewood." They then walked down the driveway and the guard opened the
gate and they left. It was so weird. I later found out that one of the
women was the wife of the previous gardener and he had been collecting
this firewood while he was here. A brief visual survey by yours truly
would put firewood collecting as the number one job for women in
Malawi. So seeing this was no big deal in and of itself, but seeing it
at my house totally threw me.

You may remember the story of Georgina and her son with Malaria.
Luckily he pulled through okay, because 3000 children die of Malaria
every day in Africa. You may remember me promising to do something to
help Georgina out. Well, I ended up offering Georgina the opportunity
to be the housekeeper of our new home. After discussing it with her
husband, she happily took me up on the offer, and as of tomorrow she
will be working five and a half days per week for us. This also means
that her family will be living in the servants' quarters here on our
compound (mental note, choose a nice word to describe our home). There
are probably a lot of funny things about Georgina's family, as there
are with anyone's family, but I have already discovered one outstanding
one. Georgina's husband's name is George, their eldest son is George
Junior, and their youngest son's name is Georffrey. Our guard's name
also happens to be George. I am thinking of renaming our home Georgia
just to follow the trend. But like I said most families are weird. My
own great great grandparents were in the Oklahoma Land Run (remember
Far and Away), and they were such fans of their experiences and
adventures there that their first four children were named, Oak, Homer,
Terry and Torry. Get it - Oaklahoma Territory?
Back to Georgina though. I am not sure how she will fill five and a
half days per week cleaning up after Claudia and I. I mean, we didn't
always have the tidiest of flats in Oxford, but how can two people
require one person to clean up after you? Well, there are certain roles
dictated by a country and its culture, and having a housekeeper and
gardener seems to be the bare minimum required of us here. Despite the
strangeness of having someone around all of the time, it will be nice
to have her. Our house will be clean of course, but so will our
clothes. And because this is Africa, ironing is a requirement even for
socks and underwear, otherwise the eggs of a certain parasite will
hatch and the larvae will make themselves comfortable under your skin.
And Georgina is excited about cooking too. At the moment, this probably
just means rice, chicken and nsima but she is excited about learning to
cook other things and well. If I can teach her to make tortillas... So
perhaps we will find ways to keep Georgina busy.