Beyond the fairly constant exhaustion of just figuring out how to live in a new place and being mostly dehydrated most of the time no matter how much water and fluorescent orange squash is consumed (hello hot, dry season), there are ongoing emotional highs and lows that certainly keep things interesting.
Friday morning I triumphantly track down a candy thermometer (for yogurt making) and reasonably priced q-tips. It’s the little things, really. Then Nathaniel calls with the news that he is physically holding our duty exemption letter for the car, an item that has been standing in the way of our purchase for more than a month. Hallelujah! I’m happily puttering around the kitchen warming up lunch when I realize that my wallet is missing, meaning I’ve lost the driver’s license that would allow me to drive our new car and the ATM card that is a life-blood in a totally cash-based economy where the maximum per-transaction withdrawal limit is $133.00 (MK 20,000).
Luckily kwacha bills don’t really fit into US wallets, so the real cash stash is safely in the inside pocket of my purse and I’m able to take the bus back to City Center and Nathaniel’s office. I have a crying, “I want to go home” breakdown when I arrive – the first and only real one of the trip. Getting around here is REALLY hot and fairly restricted with no car and I can’t believe that I won’t be able to drive for another month or two while we wait for a new license to arrive.
Nathaniel is waiting for a copy of a different letter from earlier in the process (we want to have all possible pieces of paperwork with us when we arrive at the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) to process our duty free purchase) but the soft copy of the letter has been corrupted by a computer virus (which seem to run rampant in the OPC office) and the ladies with the hard copy are out to lunch. With Nathaniel’s help I pull myself together and go to stand on the corner where all of the mini busses pass by. I’m looking for an older bus with really nice new maroon seats (enough of an anomaly that I’d noted it during the fated lost wallet ride).
Amazingly, I locate the bus! The driver and conductor, thinking I’ll cause trouble, deny that I’ve ever been on their bus, but the other riders are sympathetic and let me search the metal floor. No wallet, of course – at least 30 riders have cycled in and out by now, and someone has clearly taken it. At least now I’ve done all I can and can feel confident that canceling and reordering the ATM card is the right thing to do.
We finally have all the paperwork and fight our way through the blocks-long petrol lines (will we even be able to find enough petrol to drive once we have our own vehicle?!) to hitch a ride to the MRA from our trusty taxi driver, Davies. We’re sent to the “fast track” office (very promising!) where the guy looks at all of our paperwork, nods, agrees, says things look good…and then points out that we’re missing form C-102, which needs to be filled out by the seller and the buyer in triplicate.
And so it goes – the couple we’re meeting for a “sundowner” (happy hour) drink are an hour late, but turn out to be really fun. We have people over for homemade pizza, which comes out delicious, but Nathaniel has caught a cold (miserable in this heat) and can’t enjoy our newfound social success. Whew! Too much! And that doesn’t even begin to cover the retrieval of the wallet (a guy calls the number of a woman whose card I have in my wallet who calls me with his number and we go to retrieve my wallet and license and ATM cards – useless to people here with no internet or credit card purchasing in stores – this morning).
What will this week bring – is it possible that we’ll actually be driving our car tomorrow?!
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