The cake

I made a terrible cake for Thea's birthday. I felt so awful that I dreamt about it afterward and woke up grinding my teeth. Early in our marriage I once made Matthew a banana cream pie so bad that when he accidentally dropped it upside-down on our front steps, we both felt relieved. Somehow, this one was worse.

It was supposed to be a moist banana cake with chocolate frosting. The recipe had popped up on my feed with an enticing photo and when I showed it to Thea she was enthusiastic. We have bananas in abundance, I thought. Great! But I should have been wary. It was one of those "secretly healthy" cakes. I cringe to think of it. The "frosting" was melted chocolate mixed into Greek yogurt. Why didn't I use critical thinking??

Maybe this photo was AI generated.

No part of my finished product turned out good: the cake was sodden with too many bananas and too much oil and the frosting was tangy and sour. Even worse, I had doubled it in order to feed everyone we were expecting for Thea's party. It became The Great Cake Scandal of 2026.

We both groaned thinking about how much it cost to make. There aren't chocolate chips or baking chocolate here, so we had purchased a couple of expensive candy bars to use as a substitute. There also isn't Greek yogurt, so Matthew first made homemade yogurt from cow's milk we bought from a local farmer, then strained it in cheesecloth for a few hours to get the requisite thickness. As soon as we mixed the two together, we knew it was a mistake. "What do you think?" I nervously asked Thea. "Well... it doesn't really taste like frosting," she sighed.

My eyes were opened. With the guests due to arrive in minutes, I panicked and threw the small amount of room temperature butter we had into a bowl with powdered sugar and cocoa powder to make buttercream. There wasn't enough, so I cut out the center of the cake and arranged it on a cutting board. Thea arched an eyebrow and helpfully suggested further camoflaging it with a thick dusting of powdered sugar. At the last moment, I threw on a couple of tropical flowers to distract the eye.

It didn't help. The little kids at the party didn't really seem to care, but adult Europeans don't lie easily. The parents of our Dutch neighbors are visiting Malawi right now. Minutes after arriving, after only eating the buttercream frosting off her slice, David's mother abruptly left the party to "go hang laundry" and never returned. Her uneaten cake sat abandoned, a clear reproach. "Could this have broader geopolitical implications?" I wondered, staring at the slice which everyone was politely ignoring. I think our neighbors like us, but I shudder to think of the report his mother will bring back to the Low Country. Could this further weaken Dutch-American relations globally?

There aren't words.

I humiliated myself in front of our neighbors, but mostly I felt bad for Thea, who literally only wanted "sugar" for her birthday. It requires real maturity to cheerfully turn eleven in rural Malawi when you have a deadbeat trad-mom. 

It's a reminder to keep expectations low, probably in life as a whole, but definitely in Malawi. Real victories are infrequent and, in the meantime, Africa will humble you. It will - in the words of Lev's favorite song: 

"FLUSH YOU DOWN THE TOILET, HOPE YOU ENJOY IT!"

Consider the nurse training I planned for today. The postnatal ward hasn't been using IV pumps, but we got a few donated, so all that remained was to teach the nurses how to use them. I did this on Labor Ward a while back and it went fine. I talked to the postnatal charge nurse several times about it, as recently as 8 AM this morning, in order to plan it and and schedule a time. At long last, we settled on today at 11 AM. I prepared for it.  

Except when I walked onto the ward, I saw they were already using the pump. Correctly, too. I looked at the charge. He looked back at me. "You already know how to use it," I observed. "Yes," he replied. "Okay... then... goodbye," I responded. "Goodbye," he nodded back. 

What.

That kind of thing happens to us from 5-50 times per day. We spent a day at Majete Game Reserve to see some African animals and the dorms we were staying in included breakfast. "Can we get a glass of milk?" I asked the waiter. 

"Yes," he responded. "Do you want it hot or cold?" 

"Cold please," I instructed. 

He nodded in agreement. Then he returned moments later with a glass of hot milk.

Even things that don't involve cross-cultural communication require low expectations. Matthew stopped by a roadside stand and bought a couple of large clay pots to put on our patio. They're cool and big and African. They've sat empty and began to harbor mosquitoes, so today I asked Harrison - the guy who helps with yard work - to fill it with dirt so we could add plants. He did. 

I went out to admire it, and upon lightly touching it, the pot immediately exploded and collapsed, a big pile of dirt. Harrison returned from lunch and quietly gazed at the pot. "What happened?" he asked.

Me: "Honestly, Harrison... I don't know."

So it goes. If you can't find the silver linings in the madness, you'll go nuts. Sometimes we manage to see the good and the humor - often we do - and sometimes we don't. If nothing else, at least life is never dull. (For me, the bigger sin.)

Thea forgave me about the cake. 

And this is our new family theme song: