Home Makeover: Malawi

This is the first guest blog! While I can't commit to maintaining my own blog or splashing my name across the internet I promise to piggyback on Zach's efforts - which is mostly what I've been doing in Malawi in general. Zach cooks. Zach cleans. Zach trains the dog. Zach shops. I work. And now I blog.

Zach's first project was making our yard into something a little more comfy and useful for all of us. Here's the way it looked when I first arrived in Malawi:

(Well, minus the boards). The fence went up with the help of a machete, our houseboy Paul and a Malawian who bargained for the scrap lumber for us (otherwise we'd have paid twice the price, being mzungus):

Next Zach bought bricks (paid twice as much as they cost) in a shanty town a few kilometers down a terrible dirt road. But now we have beds for our garden! The garden remains to be completed but the potential is huge! Flowers and vines grow beautifully here. So far we've started with herbs, cantaloupe (which haven't sprouted yet - cross your fingers) and lettuce:

I'm sure the blog will have regular garden updates - including one about the mysterious dangling red things seen in the above photo.