Malawi week 2... and 3...
Door: Joost Hoogenboom
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Joost
15 Oktober 2015 | Malawi, Blantyre
Yeah here I am, still alive! It took me a while to write a new blog, but here it is in all its glory! Life has been good the past two weeks and I have been quite busy with my research. Monday, october 5, I took a day off to say goodbye to the Bfake-crew and had fun with other people. We went to dinner with a group of 5 people, of which one had a car. She heard of a good place to eat, but had no idea where that place was, we thought we would find it while driving. We didn't. After about 90 minutes of searching we went to an indian place and it was pretty much the best Indian food I ever had. At the paying moment, we noticed that some of us did not have enough money. The others fell in, which was great; because we were going to an ATM afterwards anyways. This did not work out as planned. The two who needed to cash up (including me) needed to try almost all the ATMs of every bank availale because some were broken, empty or did not accept mastercard/maestro cards. I think i tried about 6 or 7. This must have looked pretty funny to the security, to see two blonde people running through the street going from atm to atm at 11 pm on Malawi pay day.
I started studying at Tuesday 6 at the Mandala House. This is the oldest building of Blantyre and it is now in use as a tourist shop, cafe and national archive. The archive is situated on the first floor and divided in three parts: on the far end is a library/reading room. The middle room is a big reading room, which is laid out as a sort of museum for the early colonial history by the Scottish. There are old rifles hanging on the wall, there is a small muzzleloader canon from 1874 and other memorable objects, like a painting of and a buste of Queen Victoria. I spent most of my previous week in the library and the central reading room.
Past weekend, I have been enjoying myself and taking a few days off for swimming and just having fun with people, nothing too late or anything. I did meet up with people that left earlier and came back. A group of people went to climb mount Mulanje earlier and they came back after the climb (and descent) very tired and needed to rest as well. We have been to the Kwaharaba café I wrote about and just relaxed.
The other side of the buildingis the archive itself. This is filled with boxes that contain old data and files, locked closets containing more boxes and old files. A little side room contained even more boxes and rolled up maps. In one word; Awesome! This is where I spent most of my time this week looking up more data on the rain cult and focussing on my (deepened) subject; the relation with the drought of 1949 and the expansion of the cult, which brought christianity in the cult. The next thing to do is looking the two boxes tagged 'Religion' and see what info I can find in there. On Monday, I'll hope to find out more information on the area and the cult.
Yesterday at the archives I was able to relive an old passion of mine; browsing old maps!!! For a change, the maps were not printed in history books from the 2000s onwards, but were actually old!
Today was a national holiday in Malawi, specially for the mothers. The fathers here have tough luck, since there is no such thing as fathers day. Today a day off was very nice for me as well, I had finally time to catch up with my swimming again and had some time to write the blog you're reading now. I'm signing off for today. Toodles!
I started studying at Tuesday 6 at the Mandala House. This is the oldest building of Blantyre and it is now in use as a tourist shop, cafe and national archive. The archive is situated on the first floor and divided in three parts: on the far end is a library/reading room. The middle room is a big reading room, which is laid out as a sort of museum for the early colonial history by the Scottish. There are old rifles hanging on the wall, there is a small muzzleloader canon from 1874 and other memorable objects, like a painting of and a buste of Queen Victoria. I spent most of my previous week in the library and the central reading room.
Past weekend, I have been enjoying myself and taking a few days off for swimming and just having fun with people, nothing too late or anything. I did meet up with people that left earlier and came back. A group of people went to climb mount Mulanje earlier and they came back after the climb (and descent) very tired and needed to rest as well. We have been to the Kwaharaba café I wrote about and just relaxed.
The other side of the buildingis the archive itself. This is filled with boxes that contain old data and files, locked closets containing more boxes and old files. A little side room contained even more boxes and rolled up maps. In one word; Awesome! This is where I spent most of my time this week looking up more data on the rain cult and focussing on my (deepened) subject; the relation with the drought of 1949 and the expansion of the cult, which brought christianity in the cult. The next thing to do is looking the two boxes tagged 'Religion' and see what info I can find in there. On Monday, I'll hope to find out more information on the area and the cult.
Yesterday at the archives I was able to relive an old passion of mine; browsing old maps!!! For a change, the maps were not printed in history books from the 2000s onwards, but were actually old!
Today was a national holiday in Malawi, specially for the mothers. The fathers here have tough luck, since there is no such thing as fathers day. Today a day off was very nice for me as well, I had finally time to catch up with my swimming again and had some time to write the blog you're reading now. I'm signing off for today. Toodles!
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
