Happy New Year!

What the dickens??? That's exactly what Elder Prete said when he found this crab in his garden. He planted the garden a couple of days before Christmas and pretty much everything is up now. He has carrots, beets, onions, beans, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, 2 kinds of squash, cantaloup and potatoes. We are thinking of looking for a banana tree just for the fun of it and maybe something else of the kind. (Not that we will be here that long but it would be fun to say we have a banana tree!) Should be fun to eat a few things we grew ourselves here in Africa. Our gardener (the compound has a gardener) was sure he should dig and plant for us but we assured him that we know how to work. It seems to amaze the people here if they see white people doing physical work.

 This is 100,000 Malawi kwacha. The 500MK note is the largest bill they have and it is worth between $2.08 and $2.99 US depending on if you go to the bank or buy it from the black market guys on the street. The stacks cost $598.00US if you buy at the bank or 417.00 if you buy on the street. Crazy!!! A wallet is not a lot of good here.

These are bicycle taxis. You see them everywhere. They have a padded seat on the back and little handles for the passenger to hang on to and little bars to put their feet on. Quite often the passenger rides "side saddle". These next few pictures were all taken at one of the main markets in Area 25. The city does not have addresses like we are used to. It is divided up into areas, then sometimes if the area is large it will be further divided into sectors and then each house (or lot) has a plot number. So one of our chapels is at Area 47 Sector 2 Plot 206. In the villages there are no addresses at all. Nothing is on the square and I have a hard time with directions. Elder Prete, however, is amazing. He gets us there and back again with seldom a backtrack.

This is a maize shop. It is definitely the staple here and the people eat what they call nsima (pronounced nseema) everyday. Everybody keeps telling us they are going to make it for us but so far we have not tasted it. It is made from corn flour and water and kind of looks like mashed potatoes but seems to have the texture of playdough. At least that was my impression when I saw it on one of the elder's plate. They eat it with what they call relish. That is usually a mixture of chopped vegetables stirfried together. One thing that made me scratch my head, they plant lots of pumpkins but they eat the leaves not the pumpkins. They chop up the young leaves to put in their relish. One of the sisters made me promise to teach her how to make pumpkin pie. She is one of the few who has power at home but I don't know if she has an oven...??? Could be a problem.

This is a fruit stand. It's mango season here and everywhere you look you can buy them.There are little piles of mangoes along the roads, streets and alleys, people with baskets and boxes of them on their heads in every parking lot and street corner. There are also bananas and pineapples in the picture. We always buy our bananas and pineapples just on the side of the street. They usually look better than the ones in the grocery store. Our branch president grows lettuce and we always buy that from him because the stuff in the store is disgusting. Right now we have a big bag of mangoes that the Kampinda family gave us from their tree.

In the background you can see part of the sports ground (soccer field). Big stuff here.

A tin shop. Pay close attention to the little things on the lower right. Zoom in if you can. They are the little charcoal stoves that everyone in the villages cook on. In most markets there are people making tin buckets, stoves, baskets, you name it. They cut the parts out of a sheet with a pair of tin snips and go from there.

This is a lumber yard. Most of it is rough hewn, hand sawed. If you have seen the pictures on the Bullock's blog of a couple of men sawing boards out of log - well, we've seen it too. It's amazing. 

A furniture shop and a welding shop. They just go next door and buy some lumber, plane it down by hand and make it into a bed or a couch or a stool. The beds in our guest room were made in the market. You see welders all over. Most of the time they just have their torch connected to a car battery where ever they need to be.  Usually they have goggles but too often we see them just using sunglasses.

An auto service center. Notice the pit in front of the SUV.

Yup, here too! Just a little bit of home, right?????

All of us in our livingroom on New Years Eve. Back row l-r Elder & Sis Prete, Elder Oriho (Uganda) Elder Ngobeni (South Africa) Elder Gonza (Zimbabwe) Elder Fly (Virginia) Elder Okumu (Uganda) Front row- Elder Tumbleson (Utah) Elder Inzabula (Kenya) Elder Mpanza (South Africa) Elder Stinnett (Arizona) Elder Buckholz (Utah) Great bunch, we sure love them all!