It's hot, hot, hot

Ah, another delightful weather day in Mangochi. I try to do my laundry (a pretty vigorous activity) as early as possible. I finished by 8:15 am this morning, a sopping, sweaty mess, which is particularly annoying since this perpetuates the endless laundry cycle. You would think having to hand wash all diapers would lower the birth rate around here (which, by the way, is 6.3 children per woman).

Blackouts are fairly common and though the hospital campus has a generator, it isn’t always reliable. We’ve had a couple of nights with no fan. Combine that with no cross-ventilation in our room and all of us sleeping in one twin- and one full-sized bed and you’ve just defined “steamy.”

This is not a true Mangochi lady. A Mangochi Amayi would have that baby properly dressed in a crocheted hat, polar fleece head to toe and a snuggly polyester velour blanket wrapped around it. For goodness sake, it's only 94 degrees in Mangochi today, a cotton afghan is not going to cut it. I'm calling DFS.

Two nights ago I got caught in the hospital during a blackout. It required very cautious walking to get out of there, I will tell you. I walked to the market in the dark to pick up a couple of Valentine’s Day Fanta treats. Vendors had candles lit in their tiny stalls, I could hear singing and the stars were bright. Not a breeze stirred, but it was pretty cool nonetheless.