July 24-August 2
You don’t just turn up to a megastore here and get all your furniture needs in one go, this is Africa. Like the taste of their local beer, furniture is something you acquire slowly (admittedly Chibuku is something we could never, no matter how long we stay here, get used to – something akin to drinking overdue milk with a generous lashing of sand stirred through).
You don’t just turn up to a megastore here and get all your furniture needs in one go, this is Africa. Like the taste of their local beer, furniture is something you acquire slowly (admittedly Chibuku is something we could never, no matter how long we stay here, get used to – something akin to drinking overdue milk with a generous lashing of sand stirred through).
How to buy a bed. Head down to the local eatery and befriend Kusum, the lovely Indian woman who owns the place. Temptations Coffee Shop, although sounding rather cosmopolitan in name, is actually little more than a few plastic chairs sprinkled haphazardly around some dilapidated linoleum covered tables, a solitary pie warmer atop the counter that barely keeps alive a few very dead looking samosas and a sausage roll or two, and a dusty little food preparation area where the ‘chefs’ churn out the daily special as written in marker pen on an old piece of paper, obviously not having differed for several months. ‘Chambo, nsima & vegetables, 250MK.’ As you eat, you listen to the choke of traffic from a busy intersection outside. Temptations, indeed. At least the food isn’t too greasy. Oil is somewhat of a national obsession here, and when you hear that the roadside chips are fried in oil stolen from electricity transformers, it doesn’t make it too hard to forego. Kusum’s sister, Vibha, was downsizing her current bed, so within a day of moving into our house we were the proud owners of a monstrous king size bed with oak bed head and bedside tables, complete with garishly pink doona cover that is simply too kitsch to do away with. Perfect.
Next, a lounge suite. Straight down to the curio market in the centre of town to meet Joseph, an entrepreneurial young local who makes cane furniture relatively cheaply. Two armchairs, a sofa couch, a coffee table and a large mirror, all hand delivered… and I mean that. They literally hoist the things onto their heads and walk from the centre of town to wherever you live. It’s actually not too uncommon to see locals walking the streets with beds, couches, chairs and other assorted pieces balanced precariously on their heads. Our cushions we then had made from offcuts at the local foam factory before the local material shop did a nice job of covering them, side piping and all.
A dining table? This time off to the main Blantyre market for some protracted bargaining. A few hours later we had a heavy rectangular wooden dining table and six wonderfully garish old English style dining chairs complete with lurid red patterned seats and backs perched in the back of a pickup with half a dozen local boys holding them in place on the way to our house. What more could you want in the middle of Africa?
Kitchenware? Expats mostly. Second hand markets, house sales, friends of friends, notice boards at supermarkets. A slow trickle of goodies are slowly finding their way to our kitchen, gradually allowing us to feel like we can begin to cook as we want to.
For some items we reluctantly hit the more conven- tional stores, not wanting to get stuck with a malfunc- tioning fridge or stove. Game, the new South African homewares superstore (Bunnings meets Harvey Norman… although I think that’s overplaying it a little), seems to be the cheapest and best for reliable goods – that is, once you’ve organised ludicrous amounts of cash to buy anything (you can only take out 20,000 kwacha per day from ATMs, all in the largest denomination of 500MK notes, which means several trips to the ATM for one fridge purchase), cut the wiring, stripped it back and changed the plugs of the South African appliances to the Malawian UK variety, and had the wrong fridge sent over and therefore sent back again. Even then, the door decides it wants to pop open relatively regularly meaning your food goes off just that little bit quicker. Looking on the bright side, I guess it saves on defrosting.