English blog 3

Blog 3 English

Yes, another english blog like I promised. My updates in English are a bit delayed compared to the ones in Dutch, but I hope you will still occasionally keep checking if you see any new messages.

And please let me know if you actually read it by sending in a message occassionally, a bit of motivation may be needed on my site to keep up with the English blogs!

Farming God’s way

According to technological and theological proof this is supposed to be the best way to plant maize. I had been invited by Anthony, an English guy, who also ‘lives’ at the Gossner mission, to come along and do some farming. He has bought a farm house just outside of town and is teaching some of his staff to use this method for growing his maize. Of course I was eager to learn, and myself and Lieve my Belgium colleague went along. Especially because you see so much open land here in which nothing is grown, though it should be possible if you use the right techniques.

The art of the method is mostly exact measurements, lime and a bit of motivation through a story. You only dig holes that are exactly 75 cm apart on the sides (you place little poles/sticks on the sides). Then you tie knots in a piece of string that you put between the sticks and at these points you dig a hole. Two cups of fertilizer and two cups of lime and off you go. When the planting is done you’ll need to sew 3 seeds in each hole and once the plants come up, two plants should remain in each hole. Then there’s a thing with stacking bushes at the side where the water flows and after planting putting bushes on top of the soil, just so that instead of the regular 9 out of 10 water that you loose, you only loose one out of 10.
Then together with all this a story is told so that the local people who are learning the method will remember the steps. For example the weed are the thieves and the bushes are protecting against them.

We’ve had a look inside the house of Anthony’s staff. It’s so very sad to see how small they live. A whole family needs to fit in a mud hut house with iron plated roof, 2 small rooms in which barely a bed, one sofa and a cupboard fit. When the sons come from boarding school they have to sleep in the store room where the fire wood is being kept to dry. If you then compare the house to huge expat houses around, it somehow makes me humble, realizing how big the differences are.

Going Dutch with my house

I’ve been promised by the agent that my house is going to be ready today! (Friday)
Had a look this week and it’s moving along quite well, not quite finished yet but close enough. Okay- there wasn’t any money remaining for tiling the house – but instead I get a decrease of the rent and a very trendy cement floor (-: And a Dutch person of course never says no to a decrease in rent. The decrease in rent is quite substantial (€ 100,-) and I only have to pay as of December 1st even though I can already get in (as soon as the worst paint smell has gone).
The common garden was still looking lush and beautiful, with a small swimming pool, avocado and lime trees and a banana plant. The avocados are about to be ripe, yummie!

Anthony, who is working on a project to build expat houses, was taking Lieve and myself around town to help us buy our furniture. So rather than ‘shopping’ we went ‘factorying’, ordering a bed in one factory (since the boss wasn’t around apparently we got an extremely good deal) and a mattress in another one. We found the mattress place after 4 times the same traffic jam and it wasn’t even the right one, despite the fact that the contact person was also called Ali – which is similar to being called ‘Jan’ in the Netherlands. Anyway, the place was closed so we were ‘logically’ directed to the gate, on which the prices were taped, as well as a phone number. We ordered the mattress a few days later and surprisingly we got another good deal as they were each about 50,000 kw (10 EU) cheaper than it said at the gate and we weren’t charged any delivery costs.

We went to a carpenters’ ‘factory’ and negotiated to buy a bed. The person who was normally negotiating wasn’t there, so apparently we seem to have got a great deal. Anthony phoned us a few days later to check how much we had paid for the bed and said he wasn’t able to get it any cheaper than 3 x our price.

Today I had another winner: I bought a fridge in a proper store and to my surprise I was able to negotiate no pay for the delivery. I was complaining about the fact that they would charge the same delivery cost for each thing you ordered rather than just charging one time for delivery (I’ve also ordered an electric stove). The result of my negotiation was not that I only had to pay for one, but it was that I had to pay for none! Funny. Even more funny, though come to think of it I feel a bit guilty – despite asking the guy behind the counter a few times if he was sure – was that when they typed in the number of my invoice at the counter, the price was all of a sudden 400,000 Kwachas less. That’s about 80EU! Very strange, though I expect I’ll hear from that once they realise. Note after writing this a few days later: they never came back to the 400,000 difference, but did charge me delivery costs when they were delivered, despite the fact that I had received a voucher for that. I decided not to make the driver’s life too difficult, as of course I already had a great deal.

Oh and the electric stove I bought was 500,000 Kw cheaper as it had been damaged a bit when it was being transported. Since there’s an enormous amount of stuff I still have to buy I’m happy that every now and then my cheap Dutch vibe seems to work.

Another very expensive thing here is the Internet. You pay about € 100,- for a rather slow connection a month. They have to work through satellites here and before the viber cables will be connected to the wider world it will be another year or two. We’ll see what we can negotiate for that.