Thursday, July 18, 2019

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?

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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 betw...