The Good Life

One of my favorite things about Malawi is that there is always someone to tend to your needs. If you have a job in Malawi, you have to have a "house boy/girl" to do all of your chores. The cooking, the cleaning, the laundry. It has been such a nice luxury for me. I just hand over my clothes to the house boy and they come back clean and pressed. I just tell him what I want for dinner, he sets the table, serves me and then I just get up when done and he cleans the dishes. It is awesome! I have really been enjoying this. When watching TV, I just ask for tea and a scone and bam! look what I get. I could really get used to this. The reasons things are like this is two-fold. First of all, labor is cheap. From what I understand, these guys make about $35/month. But more interestingly, it is because everything is so labor intensive; you cannot have a job and accomplish these things. Laundry has to be hand-washed and pressed. They have a certain bug that can lay eggs in your wet clothes so they HAVE to be pressed to kill the eggs. As for preparing meals - forget about it. It can take forever as everything is made from scratch. Not to mention the time spent walking to the market to purchase these things. Cleaning - forget a dishwasher.

Being a house wife has a whole new meaning here. I could handle it in the US, but here, no way. It is way too much work. I cannot even take care of myself here.