HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and fun New Year Parties! It was very weird being in a hot country for the celebrations, listening to snowy Christmas music while sweating over the roast. We tried to make it as homely as we could though – 2 friends from England, James and Diana, who’ve being working in Mwanza (South Malawi) joined me, Marianne and her bloke for Xmas dinner and we played some quizzes (thanks Dad!) and watched movies. Nice. Only 2 power cuts interrupted our festivities.

For xmas dinner we couldn’t get a turkey so we opted for guinea fowl! We bought them a few days before Christmas and kept them in my back yard trying to fatten them up with maize. Diana and I decided that as we wanted to eat them we should at least be prepared to kill them ourselves, especially after Marianne had taught me how to kill a chicken a few weeks ago.

So here’s a stepwise account of how it was done in case anyone’s interested in doing the same next xmas?  (squeamish people probably should skip this bit)

Step 1: Catching the birds! James ran around the yard for some time grabbing at thin air, with the guinea fowl running faster and flapping while Diana and I were screaming until eventually my guard overheard us and came to our rescue. He walked straight in, grabbed them by their wings and that was it, much to our embarrassment.

Step 2: The killing. My guard stood on the wings and held the head for me while I used my newly sharpened knife to cut through the throat. Thank god he was holding it down because it started having some kind of oxygen starved fit and if I’d been responsible for it I’d have let go in a panic and you can imagine a headless guinea fowl running around my back yard. Eventually it lay still. Diana’s killing was slightly more Tarantino. She slit the carotid and bright red blood started spraying everywhere upon which she started screaming hysterically. We didn’t expect so much blood- the chicken hadn’t bled so much! My back yard was starting to look like a murder scene (well I guess it kind of was!)

Step 3: The plucking. The feathers are a lot more difficult to get off on a guinea fowl so we had to dunk it in boiling water several times to fully remove all the feathers. At this point we were still in shock so my guard kindly assisted us further whilst laughing at how useless Mzungus are.

Step 4: Removal of the innards. Pretty rank. I had to slice it’s bottom off and then remove the food sack being careful not to spill it as it will make the bird taste bad. It feels really wrong with your hand up a guinea fowl removing it’s heart, lungs and guts etc.

Step 5: Giving it a good wash and putting it in the fridge ready for stuffing and roasting! Yum. My guard took the inards and head for his Christmas dinner (urghh) Don’t worry I also bought him a chicken for his meal too.

It did feel very satisfying that we had a completely organic Xmas dinner which we’d prepared from scratch. This is the way most Malawians prepare meat so you can imagine how shocked they are when I said that at home I sit in front of my laptop, order chicken on the internet and it gets delivered to my door, all while I can remain in my pyjamas. Quite embarrassing really.

On Boxing day we went to Nyika national park again. Then I did feel like I was at home! It looks like England and the weather is very mild so we went for a nice boxing day stroll spotting zebras and antelopes and in the evening we huddled round a log fire in the chalet and played games.

New Year’s was a bit crazy. We behaved like embarrassing drunken offensive English people by heading to the lake and going on a ‘booze cruise’. Well it was a little row boat fitting 10 of us taking us to different bars in Nkhata bay singing inappropriate songs. It felt a bit strange to begin with as I’ve not been round many English people for a couple of months but it didn’t take too long to fully embrace the festivities! We stayed up for sunrise which was a struggle and then a bit rubbish because it was cloudy! Oh well. The lake is absolutely beautiful though and hopefully I won’t have got the schisto from swimming and washing in it (there was a power cut so no electricity which means no water too).

So the cleaner is turning out to be a bit of a disaster! At first I was very impressed with the cleanliness of my house but each time I return home from work now I find something broken! First it was a glass, then my very expensive lamp which I’d only just purchased from Lilongwe (the only place you can buy lamps), then my non-stick frying pan- which she has managed to scour off, then she blocked the sink! She came round the next day dressed in all her finery with her daughter and I waited expectantly for apologies, but no, she had come round to ask for more money! ‘give me new year’. So I said that it probably was not acceptable to ask for money if you trash your employer’s things. But I gave her some anyway coz I felt a bit silly complaining about a lamp that cost more than her monthly salary. But unfortunately when I came home the next day I found that she’d somehow managed to break the bulb that was in the broken lamp! and removed the tiling in my bathroom that keeps it water tight. Arghh! Anyway enough complaining- I’ve not quite reached the point where I want to start doing it myself again. 

Work is going well but very busy over the Xmas period and difficult to get anything done because the holiday runs from 24^th Dec to the 4^th Jan and Xray, lab, pharmacy all decide that they should take all of that as holiday. Things pretty much ran to a standstill. And there’s no blood in the northern region as the school children, who normally donate, are on hols too. It’s malaria season and there are so many patients with Hb’s of less than 5 and I’ve got a poor lady who is O neg and there are very few people of this blood group in Malawi so she’s had to wait 2 weeks for someone to appear who could donate her some blood! So for the first time I donated some blood- I was terrified of the needle and passing out but it was fine! Just hope I don’t get malaria now and become anaemic. And there are a lot of flies. It’s really unpleasant doing an evacuation with flies landing all over bloody genitalia. Puts you right off your lunch. I’m trying to make some adjustments to the ward- ie trying to get the nurses to take observations, the clinical officers to at least check them and have a sick patient bay but so far it’s a serious up hill struggle and so frustrating and I end up doing it myself most of the time. It’s going to take a seriously long time for things to change here.

Anyway hope you are all well and enjoying the New Year! Can’t believe it’s 2011 already!

Thank you for your messages and cards, I love hearing about all the stories at home.

xxxxx