Just a normal afternoon...

Yesterday we had to have the plumber come (AGAIN) to "fix" some leaks in a couple of the missionary apartments. A plumber does not just pull up in his well stocked van with his tools and spare parts. Usually you have to go pick him up somewhere and loan him your pipe wrench, take him to the market in the seedy district (no Home Depot here), wait for him out of sight (cuz the prices go up if they see us) while he locates and haggles for the needed parts, pay for them, bring him back to do the repair and hope things hold till he gets out the gate. (So far so good on this one).
While Elder Prete was in the "waiting out of sight" part of the process, he did some people-watching with his trusty phone camera. These shots are just any day, most anywhere in Lilongwe. We could take pictures all day long every day. (Lucky for you we don't have time to do that but the occasional run is kind of fun.)

Guy with lumber, woman with a mattress, man with a big bag

Big bag on the head and one in each hand

A cartload of bundles of used clothing from overseas. People buy the bundles to sell in the markets.

The ever-present baby bundled on the back

Most (many) women wear what they call a chitenge which is just a length of cloth which they wrap around themselves over their clothes and tuck in the corners. I assume it's to keep their clothes clean. They also use the chitenges to bundle their babies on their backs, to sit on, for diapers, as a suitcase, a market bag etc etc etc. Never leave home without one!

Notice the tire underneath the cart. It's the brake! Just lift up on the handle. Every cart has one. The second last stage in the life of a tire here. You can read about the final stage in one of the other posts. They cut them into strips about a couple inches wide and a couple or three feet long. Then you carefully separate each rubber coated cord and use it to tie up anything that needs to be tied.

The bike- the workhorse of Malawi. I told you above about the tire strips...that's what is tying the lumber. And notice (how could you not) the fashionable orange chitenge.

It's almost never you can take a picture where there there isn't someone with something on their head.

The guy with the box on his head and the woman with the suitcase on her head are buying tiny plastic bags of drinking water from a street vendor. The bags are filled then tied shut. You just bite a little hole in the bag and suck the water.

The same woman with a suitcase on her head. She has a baby on her back, a purse in one hand, a stalk of sugar cane in the other and the little bag of water. She probably just got off a bus. This street is close to one of the major bus stops.

And another guy with lumber. Wood is SOOO heavy here.

Not sure what is in the bag but it was heavy. You could tell just by how he was walking.

Love the hats. You can literally see about any getup you could possibly imagine here.

The bike part guy. You need it, he's got it...tires, tubes, chains, mudguards, handlebars, pedals...everything but the frame.

The plastics guy. He has a load of buckets, tubs, cups, bowls etc etc purchased from a Chinese or Indian wholesaler on the way to sell in the open street markets.