Most Saturday's in Malawi follow a fairly regular schedule for me. I wake up around nine, make pancakes or crepes for lunch, read and surf the web during the afternoon, and then watch a movie in the evening. This Saturday followed a different, but not unenjoyable pattern. Because I didn't do any of those things.
When I got out of bed at 8:30 I almost immediately went to work on a pile of dishes. We were going to have guests over for dinner that evening, so it was best to have the kitchen cleaned before then. Me and Chris were going to be busy most of the day as well, as we'd been invited to a birthday party. But if you were expecting a teens birthday party with paintball and video games you couldn't really be more off the mark. The birthday party was for our friend's little sisters. We were only there to help out with some of the activities that were planned. Two of our friends would also be there, so we didn't mind going. We had a few laughs about being invited to a girl's birthday party though.
At 10:20 we arrived at the party. We were a full 20 minutes late, but still only the second people to arrive. We're on African time here, so no one was really bothered by it. The theme of the party was wild animals, so as helpers me and Chris both had stations where we gave kids animal themed tasks to do. Everyone else came dressed up as an animal, but Chris didn't need a costume besides his normal look.
My station was the rhino, and so the kids had to put a birthday hat on their nose and knock balls off of a table and into a little basket. It was funny watching some of the littler kids doing it, as the birthday hat completely covered their nose and eyes, which meant they had to do the challenge blind! Chris' station was the monkey, so he got to make kids peel a banana with their toes. Thankfully for them he backed down on the threat of making them eat it afterwards.
After the children had done all of the stations our friends and us proceeded to play football (or soccer). Scoring the first goal of the day felt pretty sweet, but unfortunately my luck didn't last that long. I did get a few more good shots in though. We were called up once for cake, but otherwise we played football all the way until 3, when we left.
It had been arranged beforehand that our two friends would come back from the party with us for a sleepover, and one of Sarah's friends too. We all piled into our Toyota Prado, and headed home - all of us feeling sore to some degree after several hours of football. I'm pretty sure Chris had it the worst though, as he had taken a hard fall while playing. For his sake, I won't go into the exact details under which his demise came about, so I'll just say it had something to do with stepping on the ball. After that came a banana-style split, which was fitting after his role as the monkey earlier in the day.
After we got home we chatted for a while and then I went to go take care of our animals. We have a mini farm with 28 chickens, 8 rabbits, 3 guinea fowl, 2 pigs, and 1 duck. We used to have more ducks, but unfortunately our African Bees decided to declare war on them... Taking care of all of them usually takes me around 50 minutes, but I hurried, and with a bit of help from Chris I managed to get it all done in 20. After I finished I had 2 short wrestling matches with a friend, and got absolutely slaughtered in both. I should probably work on my wrestling skills before I challenge him again!
After that we played a card game and then went to supper. When we had finished eating we spent a quite a while playing Mario Kart on our Wii (yes, ten years after Mario Kart was released we still play it), and from there watched a movie. After the movie it was back to Mario Kart, and our living room became a cacophony of laughing, cheering, moaning, booing, and good-natured insults, as we battled each other in the Mario Kart universe. Around 1AM we went to bed, and after an hour of talking eventually all drifted off to sleep. It was a long, but very fun day. Glad I didn't stay with the routine!
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