Letter #6

“I don’t know” she said, shaking her head and looking embarrassed. Alex spoke to the proprietor in Chechewa. Words went over and back between them, then he turned to me. “There isn't any food” he said. Not quite getting what this meant, I said: ” What do you mean there isn’t any food?” “There isn’t any food, she hasn’t got any eggs, or scones” Alex added.
“But I told her we were coming yesterday and asked her if she could get eggs and scones, and she said yes; and when we arrived this morning she said nothing, she just kept us hanging around. Where is she, I want to talk to her?” I said.
What really bothered me wasn’t that I hadn’t got my breakfast or that I' had been mislead and my time wasted, but that an opportunity was being squandered. I encountered this same kind of lethargy on the other side of the Lake on Likoma Island, where a charity had set up a beach restaurant. It even had an oven for baking bread, but every time I went there it was either closed, or no fire was going. On my last attempt I met the young woman who managed it, and she told me that the staff were lazy and often just didn’t turn up. It was hard to believe that such things could happen in a land where so many people were living from hand to mouth.

Alex’s sister, though lacking in ambition wasn’t lethargic and she could cook. So I thought why not set up a restaurant on the beach in Ruarwe and she could do the cooking. Of course, some initial investment would be needed, so I asked her to think about how much money she would want to get started. She didn’t get back to me, but now that Alex was involved things would be different, because he would get on with it and make it happen, or so I hoped. Tingles of excitement ran through me at the thought, but could I a struggling artist afford to foot the bill?

Letter #5

I looked at my watch, and over an hour had passed since a limp hand and toothy smile had welcomed us. We had been waiting over an hour and they hadn’t lit the fire yet, which meant we would be waiting for the fire to get going before they even start cooking.” I was getting exasperated and probably should have laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation, but couldn’t because I was getting angry. To calm things down I reminded myself that in Africa things happened differently, and so to make the best of waiting I talked with Alex about his new artistic journey. It proved to be an ample diversion and we both managed to lose ourselves, but without a cup of tea to wet our lips time began to drag, and our attention turned once more to the empty table in front of us. My stomach growled with hunger, and to get away from the stifling, claustrophobic interior of the restaurant, I decided to go and see for myself what was happening in the kitchen.

"Letter" #4

At the end of the letter Alex made a plea for financial support to set up a beach restaurant. There was only one place in Ruarwe serving food; a small mud-brick establishment on the outskirts of the village, so to have another one wasn't a bad idea, especially in light of what happened one morning when we turned up for breakfast to find ourselves left hungry and disappointed. In spite of having made an arrangement on the previous day, nothing had been prepared. As we entered the dim interior we were met by the proprietor with a smiling face and a limp handshake. We sat down and waited for our order of omelettes, scones, boiled pumpkin leaves and tea to arrive. In Africa it was normal to wait for things, so after a while when our order hadn’t arrived we decided to hang on a bit longer. At that time Alex’s sister was employed as cook. She seemed passive and gentle natured. I new she had worked for a while at one of the lodges cooking for white people, so I felt fairly confident that when the food did arrive it would be good. To distract myself from the hard chair I was sitting on I looked at advert pages torn from magazines decorating the walls. Alex decided to go and find out what was happening in the kitchen, stooping his head through the low, narrow doorway, he darkening room momentarily, as he disappeared outside. I could hear some kind of discussion going on, and though curious I decided to stay put. When Alex came back looking frustrated and a bit annoyed, he said: “they haven’t made a fire yet.”