Fawlty Towers...alive and well in Zombe!

The atmospheric and intriguing facade

Terribly tatty and absolutely adorable – these were my initial thoughts as we tumbled out of the double cab at Masongola Hotel in Zombe, Malawi.

“Built in 1886” the signboards proudly proclaimed, and I was hooked. 

Welcome to Hotel Masongola

Ignoring the mutters from my husband, Alan, about investigating the few other adjacent lodges before we committed ourselves, I insisted firmly that THIS was the place.  After all, it was built in 1886, how often did we have the chance to sleep in a 127 year-old establishment?  This was History with a capital H!

The warning signs were there, of course.  The overly delighted staff overjoyed at someone – anyone - arriving through the gates, eagerly up-selling us an executive double room with breakfast for $50.  

Accommodation secured, we requested a liquid reward, well earned after travelling the challenging road between Blantyre and Zombe.

Torrential ‘white out’ rain enroute made the Seychelles monsoons we’d experienced resemble an English Lake District drizzle, turning the monstrous dirt road into a squelching morass of mud which proved a challenge for our 4x4 bakkie more accustomed to the dry sandy potholes of Tete.

The duty manager proudly led us to Sir Harry’s bar – “named for Sir Harry, you know.”

Sir Harry's Bar

The bar, situated in one of the two imposing (ok, rickety and vintage) towers was disappointingly modern - 70’s melamine, fake oak veneered with a small television screen broadcasting a scratchy picture.

But it was the shelves behind the bar which stopped us mid entry.  Images of a Cold War Soviet hotel sprang to mind, but ‘nah’, I told myself.  ‘They store their stock elsewhere for security.’ 

Chirpily, we asked for a single G n T and a Carlsberg Gold beer.  “Sorry,” the answer came back.

No Carlsberg.  No gin.  No tonic.  But hey, we’re experienced travellers of Africa, our back-up plan – a glass of wine, perhaps?

Oh, joy, the barman nodded his head!   Then he pulled a shabby box from under the counter.  Feeling rather faint by now, and studiously ignoring the waggling eyebrows and rolling eyes from behind me, I confidently placed an order for two glasses.  With ice. Please.

Oh dear.  No ice.  Eish.

Still blinkered to Alan’s burning death stare, the next request was to view our room while clutching glasses of wine tasting remarkably like Gluhwein – due either to the temperature, or perhaps a spicy stickiness developed with age?

Striding along the corridor, impervious to the whimpering and pleading to “look at another lodge, please, before we unpack,” I felt sure that finally, our historical experience was about to flourish. 

Sadly, though clean and neat, Room 43 matched the bar for dreary Soviet 70’s decor.

Investigating the bathroom revealed one threadbare towel, no soap and a toilet roll tenaciously clinging to its last 4 squares of paper, while my dearest one bellowed from the bedroom that a courtesy tea service was all very well, but surely they could run to more than a kettle, a single cup and one teabag in an ‘executive’ double room?

But the giggles really began when we opened the cupboard hoping to stash our computers away.

It was difficult to find shelf room amid the empty plastic bottles, used bar of soap and an unopened triple pack of condoms!

We composed ourselves and requested another towel, cup and an extra teabag from reception on our way to dinner.

The impressive menu offered lots of options, and we decided to forgo starters and get stuck into substantial sounding mains.  But Fawlty Towers struck again about 20 minutes later, when the waitress returned to advise that spaghetti with Thai vegetables was unavailable.

Frenzied questioning revealed that no pasta was to be had, and actually, despite the many items on the menu, our choice was really between beef stew and chicken escallops.  Both meals were fresh and tasty though, and our good cheer returned.

Rather taken aback when the bill was brought abruptly to the table, Alan’s enquiry as to dessert was met with an emphatic “No!”  Pushed, the waitron admitted that she could possibly rustle up a banana.  No, not fried or prepared in any way, just a banana off the tree. 

Hotel Masongola gave us one of the best laughs we've had in a long while. 

On one hand - our expectation of a formerly magnificent and historic residence, and on the other, the realities of obtaining supplies in modern day Malawi.  Despite the shortcomings, however, the hotel offered a welcoming and friendly staff along with basic and clean accommodation set in magnificently maintained grounds.  The meals were simple, tasty and well cooked. 

The lesson learned?  History is usually better as inky scribbles on paper, fleshed out in glorious Technicolor in the mind.  Matching these imaginings with real life service is hard to do.

The somewhat disturbing contents of the wardrobe, in situ

HAPPY ENDINGS

When we were little girls, we loved fairy tales – they always had a happy ending.  And the baddies got their just desserts.  What a wonderful thrill that gave us!  We dressed up and re-enacted the stories, always wanting to be the Princess or the hero.  Younger siblings were bullied or bribed to take on the dastardly roles.

Is it any wonder then that as we enter womanhood, and go out into the world - armed with our vivid dreams of castles, knights, flowing gowns, magic kisses - our reptilian brain, guide to relationships, men and children,  whispers sibilantly deep inside us?  Reminding us of the romantic tales that once held us in thrall.  Of proud ladies, intelligent and brave, yet ready to instantly melt into the arms of a handsome knight willing to die for our favour.

What we didn't realise, as we soaked up and sighed over the stories, is that the books filed under F for Fiction, Fables, or Fairy tales contained thousands of words dreamed up in the authors fantasy world.  They may have been set long, long ago, but little fact, historical or otherwise, came between a writer and her tale.

Happy endings are not assured, and indeed, if we had every wish and dream granted, is that really going to give us the best ending?  We learn and grow more from struggle and strife, than nonchalantly accepting only good things. Real life, the one we’re in right now, dishes out plenty of blows and disappointments, shocks and surprises. 

Look back at your past.  With the healing of time and distance, which memories and experiences are the ones that stand out as milestones?

There are plenty of good ones, of course.  Happy holiday moments, births, weddings, graduations.  Something as simple as a Saturday night spent alone, learning how to set up your first music system, blowing the electricity as you put your fingers too deeply into a plug socket, then the incredible satisfaction as you lie on the rug, enjoying a glass of wine, listening to Billy Joel on your very own, self-installed hifi?  (Laugh all you like, I was SO empowered by that experience!)

What about the not so good ones, like a divorce?  Failing to earn your degree? Or a business partnership bitterly falling apart?  Retrenchment, losing money in an investment, heartbreak and disastrous love affairs?  Being the unpopular kid at school, object of derision and scorn? 

Perhaps your real life is closer to a manic funfair ride of always playing catch up.  You’re the lynchpin central to the nauseating rides whirling madly around you, stretched like an octopus in all directions, keeping the family, home and marriage together.  

How sad then, to discover that magazine editors insist on pieces with upbeat endings, that uplift and cheer.  Of course, inspiration and encouragement are essential, and they are part of the magic world we enter when we snuggle up to read our favourite mag.

But is this real life? More to the point, is this a life that you can recognise as being yours?  

Creating a Kitchen Garden out of Sand and Tobacco Dust

We are so lucky to live in Africa - the real Africa, far from the cosmopolitan cities of South Africa, in deepest, darkest, hot and dusty Tete, Northern Mozambique.

'Why?' you might ask. Simple - the limited availability of food.  Particularly fruit and vegetables (I'm less fussed about the narrow meat, fish and chicken options).

With energy sapping hot temperatures, averaging 36 deg C (so the official stats cite, but we easily measure in the early 40's, and it is not uncommon for the mines to shut down and pull the miners off shift when it reaches 50 deg C) and high rainfall in summer, to exceedingly dry winters (which I'm sure are worse.  The dust is indescribable - fine and all-encompassing, not dissimilar to living in a cement factory, I'd imagine) and a 'milder' 28 deg C average, crisp, fresh produce is hard to find.

I want a variety of VEGETABLES!
The local market, always entertaining and interesting (I'll take some pics and post them at another time) has many stalls, all selling the same produce - tiny, dark skinned potatoes, a few sweet potatoes are on display as well, some chunky orange carrots, lots of plum shaped tomatoes, small red onions,  larger brown onions, miniscular thin skinned green peppers, cabbages, okra and something which looks like kale, untried by us so far.  

So finding some mysterious looking squash / pumpkins for sale was a real treat.  Shaped like a hazelnut, smudgy green and yellow striped, about the size of a spanspek melon, it came home and was carefully dissected, steamed and eaten.  Good!

Of course, we could visit Caldo Verde, the vegetable warehouse down the road.  An industrial factory setting with an enormous walk in refrigerated area - complete bliss to linger in!  But shock horror when totting up the meticais damage - a basket of these designer (well, beetroot, pineapple, melon, pawpaw, baby carrots - all in their natural state, not cleaned, washed or sliced in anyway) items cost the equivalent of a slap up meal in a fancy restaurant.  With imported wine.  The high price of fresh produce imported from nearby Zimbabwe.  Delicious, but guilt over distance travelled to fork and cost sets in somewhere between stove and table!

To get back to why we consider ourselves lucky.  With no Woolies, my mini kitchen garden in White River or my favourite organic vegetable box from Fountains Farm, we are stuck with what we can find in the limited local market.  Which palls.  So, doing what desperate people have done for generations, and having no option but to start it ourselves from scratch, we are turning into self sufficient kitchen gardeners!

Silly things like bags or truckloads of manure, compost, potting or seedling soil don't exist here.  No Garden Pavilion, filled with tools, seedlings, saplings, herbs and arrays of fertilisers and soils exists in Tete. The earth here is pale yellow/grey sand, which sets rock hard in the cut up empty water bottles I recycled into pots for tomato seeds.  The seedlings didn't have a chance - the sand formed a concrete like crust on top.

A Compost Heap
Back to the drawing board, and starting at the bottom meant a compost heap.  Luckily, an optimistically built but empty brick flower bed was the perfect place to begin.

Our second stroke of luck is the off cuts from the MLT tobacco factory -  we can fill up a bakkie with the dried stems and assorted bits and pieces, which are apparently very nutritious for plant growth.  It's hard to believe that something which destroys lungs and lives actually fertilizes flowers and vegetables.  Better yet, they want us to take tons of it away, at no charge!

So with the dry, lifeless tobacco bits laid out on the bottom, and scouring around for more branches, the base of our heap is laid.  Now to persuade Sarita, with neither of us understanding a word the other says, that vegetable peelings, used coffee grounds and teabags, eggshells and the like, are to go into the bed and not into the general refuse hole.

Yes, that is a downer here - no municipal garbage collections, no recycling, just the good old hole in the ground and eventual burning.  Before you shoot me, I HAVE got about 500 empty plastic water bottles (no potable water here, and you really DON'T want to play with the piped water, promise!) that I just can't  throw away, but I am running out of alternative uses for them.  And without decent soil to fill the bottles, the plan to create a vertical garden using the bottles as herb planters won't get off the ground.  No matter how you look at it, the beginning of it all lies in compost.  Plain old muck.

We should now layer garden cuttings in the mix, but we don't have a garden to offer up cuttings!  First we need some good soil in which to plant grass runners we'll pull up from a friend's garden.  See, I told you this was hand to mouth. No garden centre here!  No instant lawn.  No garden, just sand and Baobabs with a few scratchy shrubs and things.

When the energy surge hits me, I head off into the bush and drag back dead bits for the heap, but a top up layer of fine tobacco dust is probably going to do far more to get it going.  

So, WHY are we so lucky?
Still not getting it?  The excitement and stimulation of making do, of "maaking 'n plan" is addictive!  Deciding that the veges sold in the local market are clear of any chemicals or modification, we are eating seasonal and organic.  And the seeds from pumpkins, tomatoes and melons are drying in the sun as I write.  They'll be packed away safely awaiting the first compost harvest.

It's very early days with the heap, and we're still not at first base with planting the vegetables in the recycled water bottles, but it's been a fun journey so far.

Now to research what fruit and vege's like a hot, dry climate with huge rain at times...

Roots and Rhythms - Ebbing and Flowing

I started writing this in November 2012.  Unfinished, it has languished in my drafts folder, but I think it deserves to see the light of day!

Driving on the neat road into the College, surrounded by eucalyptus plantations, the buzz of cicadas filling the air; I'm struck by the realisation that this is not a journey of sadness, but one of deep comfort.

The familiar sight of the Headmasters Volvo heading towards me, and a cheery wave from another mother as she passes, bring a flash of insight - Robert has stepped onto the next stage of his life, but this is by no means the end of belonging to the school family.

The school will continue in it's busy yet familiar rhythm.  Uplands remains untouched and unchanged as the flow of students passes in and then out of its gates.  They change.  The parents change.  The school, however, remains a reassuringly strong and immovable presence at the heart of the community.

What a wonderful feeling of relief and comfort this is.  The swirling elements of change that dictate the world around us, engendering a disturbing insecurity and fear of "what next?" have no place here.

No matter what happens, the rolling grounds, filled with indigenous plants, trees and bushes playing host to water mongoose, duiker, monkeys and a huge variety of birds, amongst others, will continue to grow and develop in their own natural rhythm, encouraged and supported by forward thinking school management and parents.

The sturdy buildings will be added to, and finally perhaps even the Chapel, its temporary duty as a science lab done, will revert to it's designated function.  The well used joke among the school fraternity - our chapel teaching the theory of evolution - still wrings chuckles and wry smiles.

15th April 2013

In a world where instant, trending, disposable, new and different appear to drive the herd, it is comforting and heartwarming to know that some things will remain constant and familiar.

Of course, within the walls, change will occur.  But the things that matter, the ethics, morals, standards, warmth, welcome and acceptance, the drive to educate and to learn, the will to nurture not only leaders, but a youth that is eager to go out there and make a difference to the world around them, will remain.

Firmly anchored to the rock that is Uplands Schools, and the many other schools and institutions out there, our children are safely secured and capable. The world is filled with aged and impressive schools, colleges and cathedrals, their commanding presence felt by all who pass by.  Fret not - the chattering classes, media and social twitterati notwithstanding, our kids have everything they need to grow and develop through the exciting new phases of their lives.  

And best of all, the roots that secure and anchor them will always be there, changing yet unchanged.

Grey Folds of Skin in the Dust

Like many, I feel sure that time is moving faster, and that a month, indeed a minute, is no longer the same stretch of time that it was in the last century.  

What else could explain 2013 already reaching mid April, and we've barely caught our breath and got our act together post Christmas and summer hols?  

Where did the annual milestones like Valentine's Day, Easter, the switch to Southern Hemisphere Autumn and the first scholastic term disappear to?  I'm too busy to mourn my empty nest; writing deadlines are causing blood pressure issues and I feel as though I'm a rag doll swirling around in a cyclone - not touching sides, always dashing from one commitment to another, falling behind with 'things to do' on the dreaded lists that vainly attempt to keep my life in order.  A last ditch effort to control my body before it reaches implosion point has also done little more than add stress lines and an elevated heart rate - due to falling behind and not being able to keep up with the internet Boot Camp's  daily exercises and dietary tips, hence another failure!

You may well laugh, but  middle age spreading is scary - resembling perfectly the bread making process.  First, some solid and basic ingredients are tossed into a bowl.  Lots of kneading and punching later, a much needed rest reveals...the dough doubled in size!!  That's kinda like my 40's - loads of activity just ended in a soft, doughy, pudgy mass, oozing into a dress size several sizes larger.

Anyhow, onto more interesting observations - grey folds of skin, bulging, rotund, just begging to be embraced. Not a cuddly elephant -  Adansonia digitata - the magnificent Baobab tree. Baobabs are the plant kingdom's elephant, and there are plenty here in Tete.  They're everywhere, in all silhouettes and sizes, each one succulent and rounded. For me, their striking outline has become as much a symbol of Africa as the giraffe silhouetted against a sunset. 

Enormous, bold, voluptuous, striking in their magnificence, commanding attention and awe.  Did you know that they can reach 30 metres high and have trunks 11 metres in diameter?  Some specimens are rumoured to be thousands of years old, but that's hard to verify, as the wood doesn't have annual growth rings.  Ascertaining the age of a Baobab would have to be done by radiocarbon dating.

Besides the expected use of tree parts - fruit, leaves, wood, mankind have found some more unusual uses.  A baobab near Derby, Western Australia, was used as a prison when transporting prisoners!  In South Africa, big specimens have been turned into pubs or used as hiding places for entire families in times of war and unrest.

The San have a beautiful legend about the Baobab.  They say that the Great God, Glaoan, climbed a tree to pluck a fruit.  The tree, to tease him, lifted it's branches higher and higher, keeping the fruit out of reach.  In a fury, he created a tempest which ripped the tree from the earth and flung it skywards. It landed upside down, roots exposed, and has remained this way ever since.  If you haven't read Candi Miller's 'Kalahari Passage', do yourself a favour and do so.  Her gripping read, a political love story / thriller will both enthrall and horrify you as you sit up all night reading, unable to put it down.  But it's the detailed description of San life, culture, legend and history that keeps the pages turning as fast as they can.

I've seen the trees in full leaf and dressed in winter bareness, but have yet to see the flowers.  I can't wait. The baobab's white flowers are pollinated at night by bats, and apparently, inside the hard coconut-like shell of the velvety green fruit are seeds coated in powder that is sharp and tangy to taste, the powder being used in food and drinks.

I say apparently, because we still haven't managed to crack open the baobab fruit I collected last month.  It has withstood assault from assorted weapons - Alan's huge survival knife, my less impressive kitchen assortment, even my dad had a go with a vice, hacksaw and various scary implements dug out of his garage - to no avail.  In frustration I banged the damn thing against my head, and regretted that tantrum - it hurt!  Clearly, these things open when they are ready and meant to, and mankind's attempts to interfere with it's natural order are scorned!

Anyhow, the tree is fascinating and each specimen intrigues.  Like the one down the road, wide trunk split open to reveal the large termite hill growing inside it!  Or the blasted tree we saw in Malawi, clearly the victim of a lightning strike, looking for all the world like a Welwitschia, or discarded banana peel.

These silent giants, grey and ghost like, covered in the infernal Tete dust, reassure that Africa endures.  Long after the coal mines are emptied here, the trees will remain.  And that's a good reminder that do as we might, nature will merely nod her head and patiently survive.