At last we're truckin!
This morning we received a note saying the truck had been found and we actually had a number for it. Departure from the Port of Beira was not October 18 but October 22 but who is quibbling. It should have arrived at the border yesterday.
Mid afternoon we received word that the truck had arrived at the border. That was the good news. The bad news was that the queues were long, which is commonplace in Africa (see pic above) and they had no power at the border. Join the club!
But, according to our agents we have the paperwork done to clear the goods and it is only a couple of hours from the Mozambique/Malawi border to Lilongwe so the truck should be here in the morning.
At this stage it looks like a Thursday arrival of goods. I did ask the tarot yesterday for an arrival date and got Thursday so I am impressed, yet again, with the accuracy of my oracle. However, at this stage the crucial thing was finding the truck and that has been accomplished.
The queues at the border crossing are said to be legendary although that is par for the course in Africa I am sure. It is however, significant progress.
And we have made progress on another front. The electricians employed by the air conditioner supplier arrived yesterday and have been hard at work. The work has been surprisingly speedy and neat. The holes have been knocked in the wall for outlets; electrical cables have been chased into walls where required; they have installed the ceiling fan in what will be our formal sitting room and I have asked them to put another in the bedroom and they have replaced some ugly bare bulb light fittings with attractive glass shades.
All we need now is a plasterer/brickie to do the repair work and a coat of paint applied before the electricians can finish the work and the installation. If the goods arrive Thursday or Friday we should be set up by the weekend. Fingers however remain crossed in regard to getting the electrical work done. But, around here it amounts to impressive progress!
And apparently the generator is not too far away. We need to have a little 'house' built in the courtyard where the clothesline is to protect the generator but they have already begun placing the cables to connect it up. What a novelty it will be to cook with some certainty of completion!
The 'dinner stress' and yes, I know it should not exist but who is perfect and of course it does, will be gone. We had a guest last night, a young American woman who works in the field of human rights and I wasn't sure until 7p.m. that we would actually get our meal.
As it happened, the 3.30-5p.m. power cut was the only one and we did get hot food, albeit overcooked as it always is because there is so much pre-preparation to try to circumvent loss of power but Kendyl didn't mind. She had been out and about in Karonga and other less salubrious climes for the past week and was excited to have something to eat other than maize meal, squashed into edible dollops with her fingers.
I think it must be the Virgo in me which agonises over the prospect of 'wasted food'; although not much is wasted here. And it is the Virgo cook in me who agonises about over-cooked food when a lot of our guests are happy to just get home-cooked food.
The lesson no doubt is; 'laugh more, agonise less,' and I do try to do that. It is however harder than one might think. It is one thing to tell yourself it doesn't matter and quite another to believe it.
The term 'control junkie' springs to mind but then that part of my character is hardly news to me. It is not that I get angry, mid meal preparation when the power goes out but that it is irritating; a sense of being thwarted. Now that's a Virgo word: thwarted!
One solution of course is to just serve cold. Cook when you can and plan meals which are eaten cold. But there's something cowardly about that, or perhaps it is just a tad boring. Whatever the answer, it is cold salad tonight and I must admit I feel much more relaxed.
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