8 posts tagged “malawi”
As well as the really bad unplanned hiccups we have also had some amazing strokes of good luck. The last few days was one such instance. When we were in Nairobi our host said we should meet up with her brother in Malawi: And so we came to be staying in a three bedroom house near Blantyre that belongs to a Dutch doctor and his family currently back in Holland for Christmas. We were also given the use of a car for the duration of our stay, not the doctor’s Land Rover, but a perfectly adequate car nonetheless. The family’s three staff were all still employed on full salaries so we had a night watchman, a gardener who also washed the car and a maid who washed the dished and washed and ironed our clothes. And yes, ironing our scruffy backpacker clothes is necessary because as they hang out to dry a small parasite sometimes hides in the folds of the clothes then when they sense the warmth of your body they bury into your skin and lay their eggs which hatch leaving you with little grubs squirming away in a little blister. We were also persuaded that we’d be doing the doc a favour by eating the meat from his freezer (long power cuts are common) and drinking the beer from his fridge (didn’t understand that one as much, but didn’t want to argue).
We realised a while ago that we weren’t going to manage our original Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa plan in the time we had available. Or if we did life would consist of long bus journeys followed by a day booking the next bus leaving us fed up, tired and cursing our plan to ever leave home. So we took things a bit “poley poley” (slowly slowly) which the Africans are very good at! Enjoyed the places we did visit all the more for it and flew to catch up the distance.
Oh, and one other thing; on the journey to Blantyre the police had closed the road for the president’s cavalcade to drive by! He had his window down and was waving to everyone as he passed. How cool was that?
In the summer of 2007 my (Ben’s) Dad went to Malawi with a load of Scouts to build stuff at a Scout camp site near Zomba, south Malawi. The UK Scout association realised that they owned the site, thought it rather silly that UK scouts owned a small camp site in the middle of Africa and nothing much was happening to it so they decided to hand it back but only after doing it up a bit.
I thought that as we were passing we’d pop in and see what they had done and check it is still standing.
One of the UK scouts liked it so much that he has taken a job as assistant warden out there. It sounds kind of fun for a week or so but Sam has been out for over six months proving that he’s got what it takes and it’s not just a passing whim. The village is a 45min walk down a big hill and Sam does it two or three times some days, he also built his own house.
The camp site manager called Shay (pronounced Shy) is a very happy chap with a wife, 7 kids and 1 grandchild. He kept saying what a great job my Father did and how he'd never forget the UK Scouts. On the photos Dad showed us the work looked a bit rickerty, but in the context of Africa the building work looks great and some of the best handywork in the area.
We met some Malawian scouts who sang a song or two for us so we taught them our trademark "Little Green Frog" and "Baby Shark".
Food on the camp site was prepared by Shay's daughter and Sam and was the most local of dishes, including flying termites (less their wings) and deep fried. Surprisingly tasty! In the towns you can see people near bright lights catching the termites for the family meal. They fly for a few hours at dusk then fall to the floor, shed their wings then scurry off to live in the ground.
As I mentioned before, parts of this trip certainly aren’t a holiday because a holiday should be all fun, traveling on the other hand can be grueling and tough. Having just had the most relaxing and magical 24 hours, we then had get off the island and get to Lilongwe. The ferry is an old diesel workhorse that belches out oil and fumes. The “1st class deck” simply meant the top deck, rather than any hint of luxury – there weren’t even any seats to speak of! For $1 you can hire a filthy mattress to sleep on the deck. We slept quite well, and it certainly helped to pass the time – as will washing the oil and grime out of our clothes! At 5am we were woken to be told that it’s time to get off and that the bus is ready. We’d been assured that it would be a luxury air-conditioned coach. In fact it was an old bus that was supposed to take 66 seated passengers and about 15 standing – this in Malawi is taken merely as a suggestion, or even a challenge! With the bus considerably overloaded an announcement was given which, after everyone said “Amen”, I realised was a prayer to ensure safe travel.
We have learnt to treat journey times as conservative estimates, e.g. one journey in Tanzania quoted as 12 hours, turned out to be 18! This journey, given as 7 hours, lasted a bit over 9. Each hour lasted longer than the previous. It was hot, babies were screaming, anything and everything was shoved in our faces; elbows, clothes, bums and a naked breast onto which a small baby clung, some people were a bit smelly (not least us), a sleeping guy kept falling on Emma and one woman managed to spill half a bottle of coke down my back.
Eventually we arrived at Lilongwe bus station. A place that we returned to two days later to find it swarming with pickpockets, cheats and other types of people that the rest of Malawi is happily lacking. Having every possible zip padlocked shut made sure that we weren’t victims, unlike a few other travellers we had met previously.
As if taking a year out a traveling around the world and stopping off at two awesome little islands in Lake Malawi wasn’t indulgent enough, we splashed out BIG time on a resort called Kaya Mawa which is Chechewa for Maybe Tomorrow. As with Chizzie, two Brits¸ who traveled here long before Lonely Planet did, decided to build not only a backpacker lodge, but possibly “the most isolated and luxurious lodge in Africa” - says the Lonely Planet when they finally caught up. To give you some idea, it was the most expensive place we have stayed in – ever. Our Honeymoon accommodation didn’t come close! The island now has an air strip (currently being upgraded to a tarmac runway to take small jets) just because most Kaya Mawa guests come by plane (some probably own a plane). The resort has been done really well and impact on the local environment and population has been kept to a minimum. Any impact from Kaya Mawa on locals has been positive – clean running water, employment, health advice, community projects, etc.). Against the advice of the Malawian tourist board they only employ staff from the island. The whole place was built using local labour and not a single power tool was used in its construction. One hilarious anecdote was that the roof spars were cut on the mainland and dragged to the shore by a 70 strong church choir. When they finally arrived on Likoma (they had taken 18 months to source, cut and transport) it was discovered that they had been cut in half so as to fit on the ferry better!
Anyway, the food was possibly the best I’d ever eaten and was brought to us on a tray, carried by a local Likoma girl (on her head, of course) across the slatted rope bridge that joined the rocky islet on which our chalet stood to the rest of the resort (resort sounds too tacky for what this place was, but I have no other word). If we needed anything we just used our walkie-talkie to summon the staff! Dinner was served on the beach, the table lit by two lanterns, one of which I knocked over and somewhat spoilt the moment. Once we’d brushed off the petals we had an amazing night’s sleep in our four-poster bed with the sound of the water lapping outside our windows.
From Nkhata Bay we took the ferry to Chizumulu Island. Chizzie is best described as an idyllic desert island. It really is the stuff of romance novels/films etc. It is just 5km long and not very wide with only a handful of people living on it, none of which bothered us by trying to sell carved elephants. Some Brit quite liked it and decided to build a basic backpackers beach resort on one of the picture postcard beaches on the island. It was totally amazing and the American couple we met there taught us to snorkel which was also amazing. Not least because blind Emma was able to do it and could see enough without her jam-jar-bottom glasses on.
The thing about these places – the sort of places that folks back home (that’s you) get exceedingly jealous over and do the whole “you’re so lucky, and you say traveling is tough?” thing – is that it’s never the full story. Yes, Chizumulu was fantastic. Watching the sun go down and talking to the kids on the beach and teaching them silly campfire songs was great. But we also got very sun burnt from the snorkeling (OK – our fault – we know). The next day we had to take our backpacks (16kg of it) on our sun burnt backs in the 30 degree midday sun to where the inter-island boat left from. That was not-so-pleasant. The inter-island boat (certainly not a ferry) is a sailing boat that leaves Chizzie between 10am and 1pm depending on when the wind changes direction and allows us to sail. Today they didn’t wait for the wind to change and three guys started rowing us to Likoma. The guide book says 1–1.5hrs depending on the wind. After around 2 hours we finally felt a bit of air and the bed-sheet-sewn-together sail was hoisted and we picked up speed. Remember, we’re sat in no shade in the hottest part of the day and our back and legs were killing us. At that point I wished I was in the Black Horse in Standlake by the open fire sipping a warm pint of Old Hooky.
We had a lovely time in Nkhata Bay. Everything there is very chilled. The book talks about it having a Caribbeanesque atmosphere and I know why it says it. During the day, locals (men) spend a lot of time just sitting, looking at the lake. As you can see from the picture the women work a bit harder - these women were using sand and water to scrub down their pots.
We had a really lovely little chalet by the lake. We could hear the water lapping on the rocks just beneath us. From there we could see the lightning flashes very clearly. In rainy season, there seems to be a thunder storm every night on the lake. It's amazing. Normally it's just sheet lightning, but occassionally you can see the fork.
At night, the horizon is filled with a row of lights. This is the fishermen who go far out into the lake on their dugout canoes and use parafin lanterns to attract fish to catch.
One evening, we went for dinner at a hostel on the other side of the bay. It got too dark to walk back safely (just the bit where we were, everywhere else was really safe), so Ben arranged for a lake taxi. Going over the lake in the dark with no light on the boat was so romantic. You may have heard that the stars here are quite breathtaking!
One of our biggest surprises is how varied the countryside is here. This is just one small example from Malawi - mountainous regions, not just flat, dry land. And there are many more examples - lush greenery, beautiful beaches, clear waters and snowy, mountain-tops.
Since our safari from Arusha we’ve had an 18-hour bus journey to Mbeya. We stayed a couple of nights there and then crossed the border into Malawi and stayed in Karonga. Then we got a lift to Mzuzu and a minibus to Nkhata Bay. This evening, we’re getting the Ilala ferry to Chizumulu and Likoma – two islands on Lake Malawi. We’ll be there for a week until the ferry passes by again.
