A Taste of Poverty II

Your challenge should you chose to accept it is to taste poverty for 7 days.

yup, I say 'taste', cos as was pointed out- we cannot truly have any any idea what its like to have nothing- until we have lost everything...so until then, my goal for the week (starting Monday 10th March am) is to live as close to the standard of a middle class Malawian as possible.

Monday & Tuesday morning: So far, it has gone much as could be expected...
The bed wasn’t too bad- not too great either, but I slept ok. I decided to forgo the cold splash this morning- but after and hour of hauling water and scrubbing to get my clothes clean...Im dripping sweat at 7.30 am and a cold bathe is sounding pretty good...except that means carrying more water...

Breakfast yesterday was abysmal. I was assured that it was possible to make a nice rice porridge using just rice and water... but I ended up with plain rice for brekky that only marginally improved when I poured my black tea over it. This morning Im trying cassava which is a root vegetable that smells almost like bread...but tastes like a whole lotta starch- again, not too bad, but not great either!

After a day in the villages where 4 of the 7 meetings were cancelled due funerals or attendees busy in their gardens protecting them from elephants, and 2 villages inaccessible due to road conditions...we got back early and I decided to visit our neighbours over the road who were sitting out the front braiding hair. Communication was pretty limited as only one of them spoke Ciyawo and another a little English, but they were very friendly and shared their baobab fruit with me (ish!) and tried putting my hair into 3 braids which slipped out within minutes :-)

Dinner was a candle lit affair of steamed corn, pumpkin and left over rice (not a Malawian meal as such but I wasn’t hungry enough to eat ugali), whilst reading ‘Kidnapped’ by Robert Lewis Stevenson. Its all about atmosphere I say!

Well, I would post this now if I could but either our internet connection is stuffed or google/blogger is experiencing some problems... and just when I finally got a microphone that works for skyping too :-( ok..its now wednesday and we've finally got internet AND power back (not that Im using the lights- but its handy for powering computers... hehe).