We’re Moving to Zambia

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Moving to Zambia - Mud Hut Mama

It’s finally official – we are moving to Zambia! My husband just accepted an offer for a three month contract with a forest preservation project. It’s an exciting job with the potential to become a permanent position so it’s time to start packing. Dorian will drive all our katundu (stuff) to Zambia on the 21st and the girls and I will fly to meet him on the 23rd which means we only have a week and a half left in this house. I have really mixed feelings about it all. We love Zambia and are looking forward to moving back. It’s my husband’s home, although he has very little family left in Zambia, and I have spent enough time there that it feels like home. [...] Read more »

A Malawian Wedding Reception

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Malawian Wedding

Saliyapa, our housekeeper, was recently married and I was invited to participate in the wedding as one of the “cake cutters.” It was a little overwhelming for me because I didn’t know exactly what to expect or how to prepare but it was a beautiful day and I’m so thankful to Sali for sharing such an important moment in her life with me. Since I had made the wedding cake, I was told that I shouldn’t go to the church. Instead I should go straight to the reception hall and get the cake ready. The reception was held at a local secondary school and I was asked to be there at 10 am, the reception would start at noon. This posed a bit of a [...] Read more »

Our Family Vacation at Lake Malawi

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Family Vacation-Lake Malawi

I was really hoping to come back from this beach holiday and write about how much fun we had and how recharged we feel, but it wasn’t meant to be. I thought we were finally just about healthy again right before we left but I woke up the morning of our departure with what I thought was just bad allergies. It is that season so I took my allergy medication and we piled into the car. My “allergies” just kept getting worse throughout the day and by the next morning they were accompanied by body aches and fever and it was clear that it was actually the flu and a really bad one at that. The following day Dorian was sick with it too so [...] Read more »

Preparing for a Malawian Wedding

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Malawian Wedding

You might remember that Saliyapa (our housekeeper) had her traditional wedding back in June. Since then we have been gearing up for her church wedding. In some ways the traditional wedding could be compared to an engagement party in the States. While after that wedding she was considered married in the eyes of many, she and her husband did not move in together until after the church wedding which was last Saturday. I had offered to make the wedding cake for Sali’s reception and she asked me to be a part of her wedding party as the “cake cutter.” I was honored to be asked but not sure exactly what would be involved and with my family being the only muzungus (white people) at the [...] Read more »

Our Love Story

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Our Wedding, May 2004

World Mom’s Blog has recently posted about how and where their contributers met their partners. They have asked their readers to do the same so I thought it would be a good time to tell the story of how my husband and I met. It’s my favorite love story and of course I’m not biased. I was working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kamakechi Village, a rural community in north western Zambia. It was a pretty remote village located 74 km (46 miles) from the nearest town (which was also very small) on a dirt road that was not passable by vehicle during parts of the rainy season. There was no public transportation. People got to town on foot or by bicycle and we [...] Read more »

Guest Post: Exploring Geography

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Lake Malawi

MaryAnne at Mama Smiles has a lovely blog about “celebrating everyday parenting through education, crafts, and play.” She is the first friend I met through this blog and has been an incredible support to me. MaryAnne has wonderful ideas for keeping her children engaged and entertained as they have fun learning about the world around them. I am thrilled to have a guest post on Malawi for her Exploring Geography series. Please click over to read it and then spend sometime looking around Mama Smiles. Read more »

Power Outage: A Perfect Moment

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Kooks Power Outage

On the last Monday of each month Lori at Write Mind Open Heart posts about a perfect moment she has had. She says, “it is about noticing a perfect moment rather than creating one.” I really love the idea of being mindful of perfect moments and dwelling on them when they happen, so this month I am participating. To read other perfect moments or to link up your own, visit Lori’s post. The electricity (and sometimes lack there of) at the conservation project here has been a real adjustment for me. Other projects we have worked with have used solar power and have been off the grid so as long as you managed your power, you were never without it. When we have worked in [...] Read more »

Pictures of the Lions and Information About Their Arrival

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Chimwala, African Lions

The lions are here! They arrived last week and I’m finally posting the photos I’ve been promising. All of the lions have been given Chichewa names. This is one of the males – Chimwala which means big rock. I think it’s a fitting name. He is hard as nails and I sure wouldn’t want to mess with him. The lions were flown to Malawi from South Africa. The two males (Chimwala and Sapitwa) were in one plane and the two females (Shire and Nakamba) in another. Sapitwa was named after the peak of Malawi’s Mt. Malanje which is known for being difficult to reach and is shrouded in mysticism and superstition. The two females were named after rivers that flow through the reserve. Unfortunately one [...] Read more »

Selfishness: A Perspective from African Culture

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Justine, over at A Half Baked Life, recently wrote a thoughtful post about “Giving, and Giving Back.” She talks about how we sometimes weigh up what we receive with what we give and relates that back to blogging and our responsibility to one another in the online community. Her post got me thinking about an experience I had as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a small community in Zambia back in 1998 where I learned to look at give and take in a whole new light. The majority of the people that I lived with didn’t have a lot in the material sense, but they shared what they did have. This was definitely a community where there was always space for one more at mealtime. In [...] Read more »

Learning About African Lions and Preparing for Their Arrival

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Learning About Lions

The lions are coming, the lions are coming, the lions are coming! We took a break from homeschool this week to focus on lions. We have four lions arriving from South Africa on Monday. Two males and two females that will make up our starter population. To say we are excited is an understatement. There haven’t been lions seen in this reserve since the 1980s, but the project has restored their habitat to make sure there is plenty for these predators to eat and all the final preparations for their arrival are being made. The holding area (called a boma) is finished, this is a 250 square meter fenced enclosure where the lions will be held for their first three to four weeks so that [...] Read more »