Lunch and a wedding

I decided to make Mary a chocolate cake to thank her for giving me lunch so I spent a happy morning pottering about Mitsidi baking, making icing, checking emails and looking idly at the garden. I set off at half past eleven as she had told me to come for quarter to twelve. I had my phone with me, but didn't hear it bleep, so missed Mary's message that she was running late so come at twelve thirty. It didn't seem to matter though, I just sat in a comfy chair and looked about me and found plenty to keep myself occupied. The TV was on and I watched three programmes, one about various church choirs, one magazine programme aimed at young people and one social news thing that seemed to be mostly pictures of the President's wife singing at a New Year Celebration of some kind. It was a good ten minutes before I realized that the sound was off on the TV and the Chichewa commentary that I heard was the radio tuned to a completely different channel, it was only when the radio changed to a phone in that I worked it out! Mary's house always seems to be busy. As soon as I arrived the maid took the cake out of my hands and put it on the sideboard, Christina came out from the kitchen to say hello and then disappeared again. There were the unmistakable smells and sounds of frying chicken coming from the kitchen. A small, round woman in a blue patterned dress with a chitenge over it in rich blues and greens, was introduced as Fanny. Like Christina she is one of the cooks who makes the lunches for Beehive staff in the church hall. I looked again at all Mary's pictures and ornaments. You could not miss the fact that this is a Catholic household, above the window on top of the wooden pelmet were three portraits of Jesus, one of Mary ( the Virgin, that is, not the householder), one of the last supper and one of the Pope. The other side of the room the Virgin smiled down on me from a cupboard door in the dresser, and from the top of the dresser three large photos of Mary Kamwendo looked out benevolently across the room. One showed her by the fence outside the White House in Washington where she once went as a delegate on a conference for a project she was involved in. The back wall over the table was covered with pictures and texts and crucifixes. The gilt and lacquer piece of furniture that I described last time is surmounted by a gilded plastic clock with dramatic curlicues and three plastic jewels in red, green and blue at the top and at each sideways extremity of the gilding. The armchairs are certainly the most comfortable chairs I have sat in since I arrived in Malawi, generously upholstered and curvaceous but not too big for me. I could sit with my bottom in the back of the chair, good back support and my feet flat on the ground all at the same time. Now that is not usual!

As I was waiting Tony Madanitsa arrived. Tony works for Torrent Rentals, one of the Beehive companies. He is responsible for renting out cars and Land Rovers. He said he was on his way to Mitsidi to pick up the blue Hilux to fetch Vince and his family from the airport and spotted it in the road outside where I had left it. He wanted the keys. I said he would need to talk to Mary as we were going to a wedding after lunch and she had asked me to drive it, but he insisted that Vince's need was greater, so I gave him the keys. I'm sure he was right as Jan and Lindy have taken Vince and Emma's car to the Lake and as they have four children and a corresponding amount of luggage, nothing else is big enough to fit them all in. Rather to my surprise Mary raised no objection, she said we could go in the half ton. I didn't know what this was. But if Mary was happy so was I. We had an excellent lunch of soup followed by the fried chicken, some beef stew, courgettes cooked with peppers and tomatoes and potatoes chopped into tiny pieces and fried with onions. Mary told me all about the best places to go to buy different types of food. Mary and Christina then changed into smart dresses and off we set to the wedding. As lunch had taken so long they decided only to go to one wedding and picked the one that was nearest and where they knew the people best.. The half ton turned out to be the little Torrent pick-up truck, so poor Christina was relegated to the back again, I drove and Mary sat in the front and told me where to go. The wedding was held in a large hall which was part of a complex of shops and what looked like conference facilities just off the dual carriageway before you get to the football stadium. The hall was vast and there were several hundred people there. Mary told me that the church wedding would have been this morning and followed by a lunch for family and close friends. The event we were at was a bit like the speeches at a British wedding but interspersed with dancing by different segments of the audience, if that is the right word, during which money was thrown into big maize baskets in front of the bride and groom. Someone would give a speech e.g. the bride's dad or bride groom's dad and then everyone who was invited by that person would get up out of their seat and dance to the front and throw low denomination kwacha notes into the baskets. Since K20 is worth less than 10p it looked like a lot more money than it really was. There was a money changing table off to the side of the room where you could change a K500 note for ten K50 notes. At one point the whole of the groom's family went to the front at the same time to welcome the bride into their family. There were an awful lot of them, all dancing in the aisles and across the front of the hall. Most of the speeches were in Chichewa so a lot of the time I wasn't entirely clear what was going on, but it was good fun. We went up twice, once when all those invited by the groom's father went, and again at the end when each row of seats was invited to dance past again. Towards the end everyone was given a soft drink and a Styrofoam box of snacks, such as samosas and cake. It was certainly a large scale event with literally hundreds of people. I recognized Tony Madanitsa and Peter Nkarta. I didn't see any other white people there at all.