Birthday Day One

After several days of debate, I decided to start Andrew’s birthday early. Because his birthday is on Monday, and we will be very busy with work next week, I decided to celebrate his birthday on the both weekends on either end of his actual birthday.

This morning I have him a map of Lilongwe (and different places throughout Malawi) marked with 25 black dots. Each of these dots is an activity we will do together in celebration of his birthday from 12:00pm midday today to 12:00am on the Monday following his actual birthday. The activities range from things from cooking activities to traveling, and before we start out on each one I give him a little clue with a description of what we will be doing. Today we will completed number 1 and 2 on that list.

After we finished our work in the morning and ate lunch we left the office for old town, where the first adventure would take place. The clue led us to the wildlife sanctuary in the heart of Lilongwe, and arguably its top tourist attraction.

The wildlife sanctuary is a place where hurt or injured animals from across Malawi come to be rehabilitated. At our time of visit they only had 6 animals in the sanctuary, including a hippo, baboon, antelope, and one-eyes lion. The sanctuary is also home to the best pizza joint in town, the largest playground, and a short nature walk through some of the plant life and agricultural crops endemic to Malawi. We only spent a short time at the sanctuary but we enjoyed every minute of it. This week is environment awareness week in Malawi, so the sanctuary was full of young children on field trip from their primary schools.

After the sanctuary, it was time for activity two, a visit to our favorite local markets in old town to buy ingredients for the upcoming several days of birthday celebrations (we have lots of cooking to do). In the second clue I have to Andrew it explained that we would be cooking African fusion foods from around the world for the next week. Tonight it was Malawian garnachas, a fusion of African and Central American food. We made Malawian fried beans, corn tortillas, Mexican pickled cabbage, and papaya salsa. Everything turned out delicious, but we quickly learned that Malawian corn flour is very different that Mexican corn flour. We had the most difficulty trying to keep the corn tortillas from falling apart. We ended up making a mixture of thick tortillas and what we called “corn flour rice” or our tortilla attempts that just ended up falling apart.

We ended up eating around 8:30pm, but we loved every minute of it. Each and every cooking experience we have together is such an adventure…

I am excited to continue the birthday adventure with Andrew over the next few weeks. By the time the birthday adventures end, it will be time to celebrate our six month anniversary, and after that it will be time to take our extended trip to Zambia. Life in Africa is awesome!
(Below: Andrew’s post)

I have to start today’s entry by saying, I have a wonderful, incredible wife. With 3 days before my birthday I was expecting maybe something on the actual day, but Kylie worked her magic and surprised me with a list of 25 things we’ll be doing over the next 7 days as celebratory items. It was incredibly sweet of her and I’m so excited!

We started our adventures by leaving the office early for the Lilongwe wildlife sanctuary. I knew we were going there but didn’t want to spoil Kylie’s fun in surprising me. We arrived at the sanctuary and had a great and fun chat all along the way. Turns out the sanctuary was more expensive than we thought but I just loved and appreciated the thought Kylie put behind it all. Besides, the sanctuary only had 5 animals in it… But the one eyed lion would’ve been cool!

We wandered around the main reception area of the sanctuary briefly before setting out for the next area, the markets. There’s something about haggling that gets me excited so Kylie and I spent a good 2 hours wandering the many craft stands on Lilongwe’s main area bargaining. We found some cool masks, nativity sets, among other cool things. We didn’t buy anything, but it was still really fun.

After bargain hunting on the local streets we took off for our favorite market in old town. The area has become our favorite place to shop because of the many fruit and vegetable vendors. Not to mention fair prices for local produce.

In a flurry of cash and vegetables we had everything on Kylie’s list. Most of which she had planned for several wonderful birthday dinners for the next week. 

Despite the intense nature of buying produce at the local market I find it a lot of fun. I guess something about it takes me back to shopping in China/hong kong. I have to credit most of my bargaining skill and style to my dad who makes quick work of inflated prices and finds good deals.

While I’m able to do the same here I think local Malawians aren’t used to such fierce bargaining techniques (not that I’m mean, just tactical about pricing goods). Mostly those that come to Malawi are volunteers with very little to spend, or wealthy foreigners with a lot to spend. 

With our shopping completed, we caught a local bus home for about $1.25 USD and began cooking our fusion foods. We made a Malawian bean dish and argentine arepas. The meal was delicious and it was a clever matchup. Thank you Kylie!