Sunday 23 September 2007

My new home in Lilongwe

I have moved into my new home in Lilongwe, and have been here for nearly 2 weeks now.

I’m living with a family consisting of a mother, 4 of her daughters (she has 9 daughters in total), and 2 of her grand daughters. The daughters range in age from 18 to late 20s. The 2 grand daughters are both 7 years old.

While the original agreement was for me to have a room to myself, long story short, I now find myself sharing a room with a woman my age named Gee. While I wasn’t thrilled by the sudden change in plans, I haven’t minded sharing a room so far, and otherwise I really like the place, so I’ve decided I’m willing to live with this situation for the time being!

My new place is located in a part of town called “Falls Housing Estate” though I’m not entirely sure how it got the name as there are no falls of any sort in the area. I’m a 25 minute walk from work (which is about as good as I could have hoped) and am nicely situated near the bus station, a market, and many shops.

Photo 1: The house
The house consists of a sitting room, kitchen, shower area, toilet, and 4 bedrooms, all accessed down one long hallway.

Photo 2: The street
I live on a very bumpy dirt road!

Photo 3: The sitting room
Many an evening is spent chatting away in the sitting room, listening to Christian radio stations on the stereo. Though, much like back home, the kitchen is where people tend to gather to socialize!


Photos 4 &5: The kitchen
Most of the cooking takes place on a charcoal stove, or a fire outside, though that has changed a bit with my recent purchase of a hot plate. We regularly have a little 2 year old boy over to visit, and I get extremely nervous having him in the kitchen with all those hot surfaces and pots of food cooking away right down at his level!

Photo 6: The shower room
While there is a working shower, there is no hot water. My preferred method of bathing is the good ol’ bucket shower, with water warmed using a charcoal stove.

We have running water most of the time, but it shuts off every morning between 5:30 – 9am. The morning, before work, is the time when the dish washing, floor mopping, bathing, and clothes washing tends to take place, so this is rather inconvenient timing! We fill buckets of water every evening in preparation for this.

Photo 7: My room
My room is low on the frills, but comfy!

Photo 8: Out behind the house is an area that is essentially our garbage dump . . . The way that garbage is dealt with here is very different from the municipal waste, recycling, and compost collection I’m accustomed to back home! Not much waste ends up getting produced, but all the kitchen scraps, cardboard packaging, etc, is tossed in an area back there. The chickens from the neighbourhood come by to peck at what they can, and the rest gets burned on occasion.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

photo 3: huge fancy couches! that's a lot of sitting area packed into one room!
photo 7: it actually looks like a lot of frills to me. nice bedspread! how's the night time temperature? do you find you need a bed cover at all? how're the bugs?

Kimberley said...

Not sure what the night time temperature is exactly, but we're approaching the hottest month here (October) so it has seemed to get warmer and warmer with each passing day. I have a couple blankets on my bed, but I just end up using a sheet.

The bug situation is moderate. I see the occasional cockroach (big ones!) scurrying across my floor and the odd spider, but generally not too bad. The mosquitoes are definitely getting worse though. As it gets hotter you start seeing more and more of 'em.

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