I’m still in catch up mode in my life, and I haven’t been updating this blog very much unfortunately. I was reminded of a funny journal entry I made in Lilongwe yesterday and thought I should post it here.

Hopefully life will slow down soon and I can add all the info to this site that I have in the backlog. Til then, enjoy this story with its “passion for excellence”

Adventurous Day In Lilongwe
Lilongwe, Malawi
Sunday, Aug 24, 2008 12:57

hey there peeps! here’s another random update on our travels. i am finding it kind of funny to add this to the blog when i’ve had way more eventful and exciting, thought provoking experiences, but well, you get what you pay for and this blog be free, so read it and weep :)

we’re in lilongwe, home to the rails developers at baobab health. we got the office tour and application overview yesterday. it was awesome. they are doing some truly neat stuff here, and i’ll write about it later (hoping to present something on it at the next nyc.rb meeting actually). they’ve been super nice to us and are even letting us stay in the founder’s house, which is currently empty (he’s in the US now), and has a HOUSEKEEPER who cooks us dinner. also two dogs, and some friendly and adorable kids from the neighborhood playing in the massive yard.

jen and i are hanging out at the house tonight, patiently (in the style of new yorkers) trying to clone the code repos off of github. we just shared the leftover rice from yesterday after noticing the casserole (the extremely nice, lovely and wonderful) housekeeper nancy made for us was actually covered in ANTS, after it was out all day while we rocked out in blantyre… and not rosemary or some other spice.

re: blantyre, that’s another story for another time.

i ate a tiny piece of this casserole last night after coming home from hanging out with Mwatha, one of the baobab developers. i did this in the dark, as i didn’t want to wake up jen, who was sleeping.

dude, i ate ANTS. it’s been awhile since i’ve done that and knew about it.

moving right along…

we took an Epic Walk (to Remember) today. we went from the house, to the nature sanctuary, through it, and then … well this part is funny, in the way things are funny that aren’t exactly bad and make you pissy, but are still neither hilarious nor peculiar. there was a guidebook to malawi here in the house, so like a good house guest i promptly stole, er, borrowed it for our adventure. it looked like the new city centre (which has a heart, “if you can call it that” according to this guidebook!) was fairly close to the sanctuary and even better it had a little icon that the legend said indicated minibuses to town were available there.

next to a huge shopping centre (omg, teh mall!) so i figured, hey, we can’t miss that. plus i can get that malawia(ia)n mani/pedi i’ve been longing for all my life. we walked down the only road intersecting with kenyatta rd in the viewable area - youth drive, our map said. seeing no elderly people on it, we were assured this was the correct street. it looked like the second street crossing it would be independence, which would lead us to both shallow and transportive victories. gmail is telling me transportive ain’t a word, but i am choosing to ignore it, btw.

so we were walking right? did i mention that? we walked HELLA far. this street just kept going. there was one road that intersected at it, but no second one. finally, ages later, a second one. and a gas station. with men in front of it, working on a day glo 70s looking tiny car, shouting something “sexy” (that is, not sexy) at us. i decide to ask this chick walking towards us if this is independence road.

chick: what?
me: this street, is this in-de-pen-dence road?
chick: what road? *gestures to the one we’re on, aka youth drive*
me: no, this one *gestures to the one we’re at an intersection with*
chick: i don’t know this, what did you say? in….
me: *shows on map*
chick: *look of incomprehension*
me: city centre? new city? SHOPPING MALL? huge shopping centre?
chick: oh, i go there now, you follow me *starts walking*

me + jen: *no effing way look passes between us*
me: well, how do you get there, seeing as you appear to be walking away from it?
chick: you follow me, i go there.
us: err… no thanks, we’ll just ask someone else for directions

so we ended up thinking that street totally must be independence road. we walk down it. and walk. this is becoming a theme, no? africa figured, hey, you wanted to walk all the fucking way up to the roof, now you must walk to across country lines too. or something.

we finally see a building that looks nothing like the one on the monopoly money (i still can’t say kwacha in public without thinking i’m talking dirty somehow, and seeing as jen is with me on that, i don’t feel like a complete freak telling you all that) and i am able to see that on the map, we’re at the reserve building. we walked, oh, um, 3km out of the way. we were at congress or something road. aka, intersection 1. we somehow a) missed congress & independence the first time and b) missed independence the second time by walking in a very hard to describe but visually clear arc around lilongwe.

it could be more than 3km out of the way. we figure the entire day we walked ummmm well, more than we walked per day on kili.

SRSLY.

we ended up UNABLE to find the supposedly huge shopping mall. there was some hot pink building but it wasn’t the mall. by now i’m ready to kick the shit out of this map. my compass is useless. i’ve decided to move to polynesia and apprentice with one of the remaining wayfarers and have him teach me his craft of navigating with nothing but jedi mind tricks.

to close this saga, we found ourselves at the capital hotel, which in reality is the sunbird hotel. nice place. we meet a friendly employee named pola who is more than happy to guide us, as he “has an unending passion for excellence.” he shows us the shops. jen goes to the loo.

he then shows me to the Business Centre and asks me if I do business. I am not quite sure how to respond to this, so I nod. Of course, I’m a business person. It seems every guy I’ve met on the street in East Africa so far is either a businessman, a consultant, or is really madly in love with me, so I might as well be all three of those two.

he tells me i can internet from there. i’m really tempted to, but i am also just wanting to get the hell out of this soulless part of town (see above for guidebook description), so i demure.

pola ( jen says this is his name, i thought it was just regular old “paul” ) insists on giving us the rest of the tour of the hotel lobby. i tell him that it’s ok, i just want a cold drink and i see the sign marked “restaurant ->” and also one marked “cocktail bar ->” so i figure i can find a coke at one of those.

he again insists on showing me around, and reminds me that he has a “passion for excellence” with a huge smile. he’s missing 2 teeth, incongruously - he’s otherwise really well dressed and presentable.

i’m not making this up.

so, pola/paul is about to show us to the swimming pool when i notice we’re in front of the bar and see bottles of delicious coca cola light behind it. i tell him, ok we’re gonna go in here, and bid him a fond farewell. he tells me to let him know when we want a taxi back to old town, which he’ll get for us promptly, due to his passion for excellence.

we sit down with a big PHEW at the bar and have water and sodas.

we leave the bar, buy some random shit in the little shop, and find mr. excellence. he picks up the phone, says something i don’t understand, and within seconds a taxi is in front.

we thank him for his help again and as we’re getting into the taxi (i slipped him 120 kwatcha to better show my appreciation) he says…

please come back again and visit the swimming pool, or just come back whenever you want to! we have a -

you guessed it

- passion for excellence!

we taxi’d home and that is the end of my story. i fed the casserole to the dogs. i hope that was ok. they seemed to love it, and i now have two more friends. yay. i also met a bunch of the neighborhood kids and gave them some cake.

we ate some cheese and crackers for dinner. heh.

THE END

I found this usage amusing:

   1  if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) {
   2  document.write("YUP.");
   3  } else {
   4  document.write("NOPE.");
   5  }

from http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

And for the record, I realize I haven’t updated this in ages, and that I have a lot of explaining to do. And stories to tell. Like how I climbed a mountain and got attacked my spiders and was basically covered in dust for about 5 weeks straight, pushed code to github from behind a morgue, and had a blast in the EU on the way back.

Experiencing culture shock in Berlin especially with some really awesome people - thank you for holding my hand while I got used to the existence of flush toilets, potable tap water, and lots of delicious, non-stringy meat products. You know who you are, and you rock.

More later. Until the worldHasEnded != “undefined”, as usual this is yours truly,

Jacqui