Malawi Part 1: Getting to Lilongwe

So it might not have been the best idea to travel to other countries in Africa, because during each trip I’ve thought, wow I’d really like to come back and live here. Malawi was no different. Even though I spent 6 days of my 10-day trip engaged in heavy duty travel (by bus and ferry) and came back sick, I had a great time and home to go back one day and see the rest of the country. In many ways it is very similar to Zambia, but I think the people are even friendlier and the country even prettier.

My adventure started with an extremely long bus trip. I know, we are all tired of bus trip stories by now, but too bad, that is the cheapest way to get around. The bus was supposed to leave at 7:30 am (I boarded at 6:45 – Sara was extremely awesome and got up to serve me pumpkin cheesecake before I left!), but we finally pulled out of the bus station at 12:30. Something random I learned on this trip to Malawi was that I can’t tell a Canadian accent from an American one. Weird – having never met many Canadians, I always assumed they sounded different. But there was this muzungu guy on the bus with me, and when I overheard him speaking, I wrote in my journal, “there’s another American across the aisle from me – small world!” But it turns out Jason was Canadian. The same thing happened on the ferry! Who knew! Something else I learned recently – and this is just embarrassing – with all the Iranian election brouhaha, is that the current Ayatollah Khamenei is an entirely different person from Ayatollah Khomeini who overthrew the Shah. All this time I thought the original Ayatollah was alive and kicking. Had I applied any thought to the matter I would have realized that Khomeini would have been like 100 years old by now, but then, clearly I never considered the matter. Anyway, just sharing my moment of feeling really stupid lately – now, back to Malawi.

Finally pulled into Lilongwe around 1 am, after a long but relatively uneventful ride. I was amused at our roadside bathroom break though. (WARNING: (LACK OF) BATHROOM STORY AHEAD – READ AT YOUR OWN RISK) All the sudden the bus just stops by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Everyone starts getting off, and, roused from my stupor, I assume that the bus has broken down. Seeing me looking confused, the little old lady next to me explains in broken English that no, we actually stopped so everyone could get out and pee. I guess I still look confused, because she grabbed my hand and told me she would show me the way. So I followed the other women out into the tall grass, where all the ladies were going about their business nonchalantly. Now, I did actually have to pee, so I was happy we stopped, and this place was much cleaner and more pleasant than any bus station bathroom, but it did occur to me that this was an excellent way to get bitten by a snake. What an embarrassing way to die that would be. My family, for the rest of their lives, would have to tell people that I died from a snake bite I received while peeing by the side of the road in Zambia. But I lived to tell the tale, whether you want to hear it or not, so no worries!

Also, when we go to Chipata, the last big town in Zambia before the border with Malawi, I used the Council toilets (fee-paying toilets set up by Town Councils in busy areas) by candle-light because all the power was out. That was a little sketchy too. I asked where the bathrooms were, and the men pointed in the direction of the pitch-black building across the street. Against my better judgment I went over, found the cashier, paid my 500 Kwacha and got a little candle to take with me to the toilet. That required a lot of careful maneuvering, let me tell you!

(OK, BACK TO MORE APPROPRIATE TOPICS)

So, like I said we rolled into Lilongwe around 1 am, to the bus station on appropriately-named “Devil Street”. I’ll now take the time to give a humongous thank you to Kym and Johanna, two extremely awesome girls who live in Lilongwe and played tour guide and chauffeur for me while I was there. Kym and Johanna, et al., picked me up at the bus station, which was so so so great. I met Kym and Johanna in Lusaka while they were here as part of the team leading a training for the new Baptist Missionaries. We only hung out a few times, so this isn’t even like my annual stays on Jordana’s couch – at least she has known me long enough to know I am (usually) a (fairly) decent human-being (most of the time). They really welcomed me into their home, and it made my time in Malawi much more special.

In addition to picking me up, their friend graciously agreed to let my Canadian bus-mate Jason sleep on his floor because Jason didn’t have anyplace else to go – I felt bad just leaving him in this deserted bus station at 1 am!

The next day I slept in, then ran some errands and just relaxed and hung out. Ate some delicious food and played a few rounds of Chinese Poker. It was good to have some down time before I headed up the coast to Nkhotakota to catch the ferry.

Anyway, this has been a really long post on just one day! To be continued ….

Back to Reality

So I’m back in the office after my trip to Malawi, my bout of strep throat/conjunctivitis, and our trip to Livingstone. I’ve spent a lot of the day contemplating the calendar – I’ll be back in the States in 2 and a half weeks! And I’ll be on my way to NYC this time next month – crazy! Livingstone was really fun, and I know leaving my roommates is going to really hard!

I’ll write about my trips and post some pictures later this week (I meant to post pictures today, but I wasn’t paying enough attention this morning and accidentally brought my camera charger to work instead of the cable to transfer photos). I did send a round of postcards to family while in Malawi, so be on the lookout (in September, probably). Be warned though, that I was extremely sleep-deprived when I wrote them, so if they are illegible or unreadable, I apologize.

I’m starting to wrap things up here at work, and this morning I reviewed the “Resources for Reentry” Guide HQ sent to prepare me for returning to the States. It included a lot of useful tips, including: “do not overload your plans upon reentry; give yourself at least a week to relax and reflect” and “for a few weeks, avoid places and situations that may expose you to sensory overload.” Hmmm, oops! Oh well, I’m sure sleeping on Jor’s couch, going to NY with my stuff, going to VB for the wedding, going back to NY to move into a new place, and starting law school, all within 3 weeks, will give me plenty of time to recover and reintegrate, right?

Update

Welcome to Monday, dear readers!

Had a much better weekend – not really hard to do, but still, we were all thankful to not be on a bus! Saturday our Director had us over to her farm for lunch which is always nice. Lunch was followed by a tremendously awful movie called Highlander: The Source. I wish I could have that 90 minutes of my life back! The basic plot is that the Highlanders (immortal warriors) went on a quest to find “The Source”, which turned out to be the ability for the normally sterile Highlander to have a baby with his true love. Blech.

Sunday we went to watch rugby (the Castle Sevens tournament, called so because they play seven on a side), which was awesome, though we never quite figured out the rules of scoring. It was a beautiful day and rugby is so fast-paced that it never got boring – fast-paced and violent I should say – we saw a bloody broken nose, and humongous purple ankle, and a likely concussion during the high school game from getting shoved head first into the ground .. charming!

Ally, the summer legal intern, brought part of my high school reading list with her – I’ve reread Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, and have 1984 up next. Also reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I’ll be bringing Catch 22 with me to Malawi, which actually I have never read (Scandalous, I know!). I leave for Lilongwe on Wednesday (reached via a long bus ride), then head to Lake Malawi Friday. Late Friday night/early Saturday I pick up the ferry to take me to Likoma Island, close to the Mozambique side of the lake. I chill on the beach until Tuesday, whereupon I’ll probably make the exact return journey, though I have enough time off that I can explore further if something catches my eye. Right after I get back we all head down to Livingstone for a long weekend. My roommates are considering bungee-jumping and the gorge swing, but all I plan to do is see the falls, take a safari to see the one remaining rhino, visit the museums, and eat some good food – very low key!

Pictures: 2 More

Pictures: Botswana

Pictures: Victoria Falls

Pictures: Siavonga

Two pictures from our day trip to lovely Lake Kariba!

Project Soccer Game: Epic Failure

Hi All! Sorry I haven’t written in a while.  I spent the last two weeks running a paralegal training for 32 – it didn’t leave me much energy for blogging! But I am back in the office, and I received an official request from Dad for more blog posts, so here it goes!

Sad news though, it seems I have lost my travel mojo.  I had hoped our aborted trip to Sivonga was a fluke, but this weekend proved otherwise.  Our plan: attend the Zambia-Rwanda World Cup qualifying match in Chililabombwe, a town on the border with Congo, about 6 hours north of Lusaka.  The outcome: 20 hours spent on buses, never reaching the game.  Sigh.

Saturday morning, the alarm was set for 4:15.  I woke up at 3:50 when the guard opened the gate.  This is not something that would normally wake me up, but I think my body was attuned to noises or something.  We are all ready to go by 5, and, Zambian-style, our friend Joseph came to pick us up around 6.  We head to the bus station, where we board a bus that is supposed to be leaving at 6 for Chililabombwe.  The game started at 2, so that would be plenty of time.  3 hours later, the bus leaves the station, the bus driver swearing that we will still get to the game in time.  Not so much.

The game, unfortunately for us, started promptly on time, and we were still 1 hour away.  We kept going, hoping that at least we would make it for half time.  Got to Chingola, the last big town before Chililabombwe and we are told we’ll have to find another bus because the bus we were on was going for servicing.  We give up – the game was well into the second half and we are still 30 minuntes away.

We hop on  mini-bus to Kitwe, take a taxi to the main station, and then find a coach bus back to Lusaka.  We get on that bus around 5:00, it fills up and leaves around 7:30.  We are making a little better time going back – it is dark and there is less traffic on the road.  But then.  Oh, but then.  We reached the Kapiri weigh station, and go through it once.  The bus pauses. We circle the station, and go through it again.  This time though, the conductor sends everyone from the back of the bus to stand in the front.  We pause again, then make the circle again to go back through the weigh station.  More people this time move to the front of the bus.  Again, no dice.  Round number four, everyone on the back of the bus gets off the bus – including us, looking for fresh air and a chance to stretch our legs.  You would think the kindly folks at the weigh station might take issue with this fraudulent weighing, but apparently not.  Finally, with only half the people onboard, the bus meets the weight requirement.  We all reboard and the bus gets back on the road.  Finally, mercifully, we arrive back in Lusaka around 2 am.

And I want to give you a little description of the bus itself – completely packed (we sat three to a row the whole time), occasionally accompanied by a chicken, hot and stuffy, and accompanied by awful DVDs played at very high volume.  We got to watch a few Nollywood flicks (low budget movies made in Nigeria).  In “Beyonce”, Beyonce, “the president’s daughter” attempted to kill everyone who got in the her way to marrying “Raj Johnson” the handsome man she was obsessed with.  This inluded hiring toughs to break Raj’s legs and pour acid on Ciara’s face (Ciara being Raj’s true love – the lounge singer with a heart of gold), and hiring the same guys to shoot Ciara, after Ciara got miraculous face transplant surgery to fix the acid scars.  Ciara got her revenge though, recovering from the gunshot wounds to shoot Beyonce at her wedding with Raj.  And that was the best of the bunch.  So sleeping wasn’t really an option for me, between the heat, the cramped conditions, and the loud movies.

Wake up feeling refreshed Sunday morning, and walk over to see a little polo before we pick up Ally, the fourth intern, from the airport.  It is a beautiful morning to be outside, and my spirits are revived.  Our driver picks us up and we head to the airport to meet the 12:55 flight.  2 hours later, it is clear that Ally was not on it.  We decide to come back for the next flight at 5:40. By this time my energy was gone and I was exhausted.

We go have lunch and watch the French Open.  I haven’t really watched tennis before, and it was surprisingly interesting. Though I have to say that whoever invented tennis really went out of their way to make the scoring complicated – 15, 30, 40 – really guys? really? Is that necessary?  I especially enjoyed the crazy guy who accosted Federer.  Although I think I could have taken that guy down faster than the security guys did.  They really took their time!  Also got a few laughs at Federer’s speech “I hope your success lasts for more than just a few weeks”  – oh snap! There is a back-handed compliment 🙂 Anyway, I felt better after some food and TV, and was feeling optimistic again.

Then we went back to the airport, where an hour plus later it was clear she wasn’t coming on that flight either.  Sigh.  I go back to the office to call home and check my email.  Where I find that she is actually coming today at 12:55.

To conclude, I would really like a do-over of this weekend.  Or at the very least forget it ever happened.  Maybe I should have knocked myself unconscious – I think that would have been an improvement.

Gnarly

So, I spent today at a training workshop for a widows ministry.  It was a great group, with a lot of personal experiences to bring to the topics (succession and sexual violence). Still, I can’t say spending the day listening to people speak in a language I can’t really understand is the most fun thing ever.

Storm clouds started gathering towards the end of the day, and soon we had our second rainstorm in May (rain in May is unheard of!).  It quickly switched from rain and wind to rain and wind and hail … crazy ginormous hail!  In the twenty minutes it stormed (which roughly coincided with our drive back to the office) the roads flooded, power went out, trees went down all over the place, and the hail was just insane.  It sounded like someone was dropping rocks on our truck.  And it became clear to me that I am at my most eloquent during such surprising and exciting events: pretty much all I said during the ride home was “Dude!” and “Sweet!” Seriously.  Anyway, it was pretty cool (at least, from the vantage point of the safety of the car).  The mosquitoes have just gone insane after the unseasonable rain though – I have never seen so many of them!

Plans for the weekend are a Cinco de Mayo party on Saturday (technically a Nueve de Mayo party, but since no one but the Americans here have ever heard of Cinco de Mayo, I think we’re safe).  Sunday we’re going to watch part of a polo tournament (Zambia v South Africa).  I am extremely excited about this, for some unfathomable reason.  I’ll wish all you mothers out there Happy Mother’s Day in advance.

As for reading, I finished the complete works of Jane Austen.  They exceeded my expectations and I think I’ll be rereading a couple.  And, now I can safely watch all the Jane Austen movies Hannah brought us.  I am rereading Harry Potter, and halfway through Band of Brothers.  Once these are done I’ll return to the various law and human rights books I have remaining.

Awesomeness

Hannah, Sara and I had an awesome week, with only a few travel-related hiccups. Hannah is a flight attendant and so flew standby to Zambia.  Sadly this got her to Zambia a bit later then we expected but I think we managed to work a lot into the 5 days she was here!  We were supposed to leave for Livingstone early Thursday, traveling with the lawyers in the office who were going to Livingstone for the Law Association of Zambia annual meeting.  At 10 am Thursday I called the office to be told we would be leaving a 1 pm.  At 1 I called only to be told we might not be going at all!  I hurried to the office to regulate, and worked it out so we could leave at 5 am Friday (traveling at night isn’t really an option here, due to the roads).   With our Thursday newly free we took Hannah out to lunch and dinner, shopped for chitenge in the garment district, and watched a few episodes of Pushing Daisies (Hannah brought Sara the DVDs).

We did actually leave at 5am on Friday, and with our driver going a leisurely 120 -140 km/h (he is an excellent driver, but I can’t say I slept much!) we made it Livingstone by 11.  We checked it to the hostel, changed clothes, had lunch, and headed to the Falls.  It. Was. Awesome.

Friends told us we would get wet, and so I was prepared with raincoat and outfit of quick-drying materials  and my Keens (the man in front of us was wearing a huge yellow poncho and hotel slippers – I’m not sure who looked more dorky!).  I was thinking heavy mist wet, not downpour wet.  But the water level is so high, and the falls so powerful, that walking next to them is like walking in a shower.  It was really cool, but at the heaviest part, all I could think was “Ew ew ew I’m getting dirty river water in my mouth and eyes! Parasites! Bilharzia! Yuck!!” I do realize this a completely ridiculous reaction to have while getting soaked by the world’s largest waterfall.   Afterwards we sat upstream on the Zambezi riverside and dried off in the sun.  The Falls really are incredible!

We returned to the hostel to change, and then walked to the curio market in town.  We were the only tourists there, and after Sara bought something at the first stall I think the vendors smelled blood in the water – by the time we got the end I thought we might cause a riot! The vendors are expert salesmen – each one apparently was our best friend, promised half price, had a gift for us “for free”, had sold nothing all day, and was supporting a brood of starving orphans.  Shopping like this isn’t exactly a relaxing experience, but I got a few cute things.  Dinner was delicious Italian, followed by a few more episodes of Pushing Daisies on my computer.  We had to go to bed early, because on Saturday …

we went on safari in Botswana!!! At the last minute, a friend told us about an $80 day safari to Chobe National Park and we jumped at the opportunity.  It was a great day and well worth the money!  We got to the border around 8:30am, passed through immigration easily, and were met on the shore of the Zambezi (the border here is a river crossing) by a pontoon boat to take us across to Botswana.  On the other side a van was waiting to take us to a beautiful lodge on the edge of Chobe river.  We went directly to a boat to start our 3 hour river cruise – complete with tea and freshly made cookies!  The river is beautiful and the water level there is at its highest in 50 years! I saw my first crocodiles (Yay!!) in addition to a ton of hippos, elephants, impala, kudu, and birds.

The lovely relaxing cruise was followed by a decent buffet lunch at the lodge and then a safari drive through the Park in the afternoon.  From land we saw many more elephants, hippos, impala, and kudu, as well as antelope, water buffalo, giraffes, and warthogs.  The vehicle brought us back to the border and we were back in Livingstone by 5:30.  We had an uneventful drive back to Lusaka on Sunday (although with three in the back seat it was not especially comfortable).  The only downside to a day safari is you miss the big cats, who are most active at dawn and dusk.

Monday we went with the Howards to visit Flying Mission, an awesome organization that (as the name suggests) flies missionaries and supplies around Botswana and Zambia. Hannah, in addition to being a flight attendant, is a pilot, so we are trying to convince her to come work in Zambia for Flying Mission!  Next was more shopping at the local Kabwata Cultural center (in theory, the crafts there are handmade locally, but in actuality they come from all over Africa in varying degrees of authenticity).  You might think Livingstone would have dissuaded us, but we were determined to lighten our wallets!  Finally, we returned home to whip up a pizza dinner for 15 of our friends.  It was our first real dinner party, and I think it went pretty well!

After a whirlwind vacation, we put Hannah on the airport shuttle at 5:15 am this morning.  As far as we know she is safely on her way back to London!  Sara and I are exhausted, but work is busy busy and we have to plan our weekend activities (it is a long weekend due to labor day) and a Cinco de Mayo party next week.  And a dinner party for the whole office. And my birthday. And a Malawi trip in June.  So no rest for the weary 🙂

I was planning to end this blog post by asserting the superiority of my week to yours (whomever you may be!).  Waterfalls! Botswana! Shopping! Food and friends! I was convinced I had an unbeatable week in the competition of life.  But I came back to the office this morning to an email informing me that Scott has stolen my awesomeness thunder.  Engagements  trump  vacations, however awesome they may be.   So congratulations Scott and Meg, and cheers to worldwide awesomeness!