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Published: August 6th 2008
Malawi map
I highlighted in blue the route from Lilongwe to Kande Beach.After an exhausting week of interviews, I was ready to set off for the lake Friday afternoon with my new Canadian colleagues Mike and Lesley, a couple of lefties like me 😊. Mind you, I hadn’t had my car for that long, and granted, it is older than I was when I took my SATs, but I definitely wasn’t prepared for it to die on me at 2pm as I was just about to leave work to pick them up! Why do things like that always happen at the worst possible moment?
Anyway, this happened at the RSD Unit, which is located in a little complex where, for one reason or another, there are lots and lots of men loitering about during the daytime. The moment they noticed my distressing situation, about twenty of them came over to the car to try and diagnose the problem. I figured I just needed to find some jumper cables, but in true Malawian resourcefulness they insisted we just needed to push the car. By this point all my colleagues had come out to see what was going on; I had no idea what to do inside the car while it was being pushed,
M&L at the car on the main road in Kande
Yes, this is my wonderful Toyota. We're still working on a name fitting for such a long-lived, elderly, yet vibrant car. From here to the camp it's about a 30-min walk or a very windy 10-min drive through very deep sand. PHOTO COURTESY OF SEBASTIEN WEILL I was explaining to my colleague Hilda. With her usual “are you kidding me?” roll-of-the-eyes (us
mzungu women appear a tad helpless to our African counterparts, methinks), she took my keys and got into the driver’s seat, the twenty men started pushing the car, and she worked her clutch magic…but nothing! The car rolled to a halt and then everyone stood around scratching their heads for a minute until an incredibly nice
mzungu man drove around the corner and picked up some jumper cables for me. He got the car started and was about to drive away until he heard the Malawian men asking me to pay them something for their efforts. He berated them all for their lack of gallantry but in the end I caved and gave them 500 kwacha to split. After all, they had pushed the car a good twenty meters, even if that hadn’t accomplished anything!
I finally picked up Mike and Lesley and we set out on our road trip around 4pm—which meant the greater portion of the drive would be in the dark. Driving at night is actually better in some ways, because the roads are absolutely swarming with people during daylight
One of the many beautiful lounge areas at the Kande campsite
They really made this place beautiful and comfortable--there are decks, hammocks, and wicker couches everywhere (mostly occupied by the owner's great danes!) overlooking the water. PHOTO COURTESY OF SEBASTIEN WEILL hours. Even on stretches of road that seem to be “in the middle of nowhere,” there are people walking alongside the tarmac, presumably heading from one village trading center to another—women with long stacks of firewood balancing on their heads, little kids with bunches of long grass for thatching, and men precariously balancing anything and everything on the backs of their bicycles, from crates of beer to live animals to another bicycle! At night, except in the larger villages, the roads are deserted and there is practically no traffic.
We drove east to Salima (1h 20 min), which is the lake destination nearest Lilongwe that people usually go to for day trips, then turned to head north to Nkhotakhota, a lakeside “city,” and then up to Kande Beach, which is just south of a small town called Chinteche. From Lilongwe to just before Nkhotakhota is almost perfect tarmac, but the stretch of road from there to a dusty town called Dwanga is narrow and severely potholed. Fom there it's another hour or so on perfect road to Kande. Eva and I had gone to Nkhata Bay last summer, which is a half hour north of Chinteche, and it was
Wood carving
The common areas of the campsite are peppered with carvings like this. PHOTO COURTESY OF SEBASTIEN WEILL really beautiful but there were no sandy beaches. So for this trip we had selected Kande Beach, just a backpackers/campsite on the beach adjacent to a small village. We finally made it there around 10pm, which meant that we had missed any opportunity to eat! So we settled in at the bar, which is a lovely outdoor affair run by a friendly Malawian named John that opens onto a beautiful deck with carvings and hammocks, all overlooking the beach and lake. Truly picturesque and with a very Caribbean feel. We managed to survive the night on little packets of peanuts and tiny bags of potato chips that judging from the wrappers looked like they were imported from Thailand, along with springbok shots—a delicious concoction of Amarula, something that tastes like Irish cream, and mint liqueur that Mike and Lesley had gotten a taste for in South Africa. We then headed back to our three-person room, which cost 4,000 kwacha per night (just under $30).
The next morning we had breakfast at the little Soft Sand Café, the complex’s only restaurant, where they have the most delicious, sour, fresh squeezed orange juice ($1), and then spent the day at the
Mike, Lesley, and me at breakfast
This is where we got a start to our super productive days :) I'm enjoying a glass of their deliciously tart fresh-squeezed orange juice. PHOTO COURTESY OF SEBASTIEN WEILL beach. It's just a lovely thatch-roof, open air space with a little area for board games, a book exchange, and tables covered in Far Side comic cut-outs! Up north it’s generally colder, but near the lake the weather is always warmer and it was downright hot that Saturday. Kande has beautiful, white sand beaches and crystal clear water; that day the waves were pretty strong so you couldn’t do much but wade, but the water was glorious! And relaxing on the beach with a book appears to be a near-perfect way of melting away stress. We talked our fair share of gossip and office politics, but on the whole work felt a million miles away. Mike and Lesley kept asking what we were going to do for the day. I was perplexed—hadn't we all come here on a mission to get me a tan? I was content to alternate between baking in the sun then jumping in the lake, but Mike and Lesley eventually went looking for a more active way to spend the afternoon. They ended up wandering into the village, about a 30-min. walk inland, and got “adopted” by some local teenagers who offered to give us all
The beach where we spent many an hour...
Picture perfect. PHOTO COURTESY OF SEBASTIEN WEILL drumming lessons that night and take us into the village bars.
After a nice little dinner at the restaurant we headed to the beach, where the kids had arranged some drums around a small bonfire. We all took turns practicing on one drum—the drum was laid on the ground horizontally, and one actually sits on it to play. It was a lot of fun! And a lot harder than it looks, on your palms and arm muscles, and also just in terms of trying to keep a rhythm going.
At one point we saw a red light on the lake horizon, and were all trying to figure out what it was. It started getting bigger, and suddenly we realized it was the moon, rising over the lake. It was bright red, and absolutely huge—I have never seen anything like it. It was a truly phenomenal sight to see it emerging from behind the lake, and becoming more and more pale as it rose into the sky. The stars are amazing, too, given the very limited access to electricity in the area. The backpackers and a couple of the village businesses were probably the only structures with electricity in
Kande village
Where we strolled in the middle of the night with our hip teenage guides. PHOTO COURTESY OF SEBASTIEN WEILL a very large radius.
After drumming for about an hour we all walked along the sandy path into Kande village. Mike and Lesley had each other, but I was “up for grabs” in the eyes of the local kids, who all had hilarious names adopted from Western culture like “Julius Caesar,” and “SisQ.” After some sort of negotiations in Tonga—the language spoken in this region—it was apparently agreed among the group that Mr. Smooth—who looked about thirteen years old—had laid the first claim to me. I was initially a little annoyed by the whole situation, and wished I could just go back to being the third wheel to Mike and Lesley instead of the center of male adolescent attention. But the kids were, well, kids, and their attempts to show each other up by bragging about how old they were or how many girlfriends they had had were entertaining enough along the 30-minute walk into the village.
It was dead quiet, and dead empty when we arrived around 11pm on a Saturday night—there were a couple of lights on, but no people around. We had expected to hear the loud music that is usually blaring from one of
One of two bars in Kande
Yes, that's the actual jukebox on the right there from our wild night out in Kande Village, and the very pool table where Lesley beat SisQ at pool. PHOTO COURTESY OF SEBASTIEN WEILL the local “social clubs” (bars) during the daytime, and figured they must have all closed. But our trusty guides led us into a little brick structure with a porch outside, and sure enough there were a few men sitting around a pool table and a jukebox—it was just that no one had money to turn it on! As soon as we arrived someone in our group put some coins in, and suddenly the music was blaring so loud I was sure you could hear it several villages away, let alone in every house in Kande! I felt awful, considering that it was around eleven at night and surely most people were asleep. The contrast between how quiet it had been when we arrived, and how loud the damn thing was when we showed up, was pretty awful. But these were our hosts so we just followed their lead. Some of the men were drinking Chibuku, the local maize beer that comes in 1-liter cartons. Others were drinking cane liquor that comes in tiny little clear plastic packets, like ketchup or mustard packets back home! Needless to say Lesley and I were the only women there, which wasn’t awkward as much
Lake Malawi at sunset
With a view like this you can understand why we found it impossible to leave! Well, that and the flat tire... PHOTO COURTESY OF SEBASTIEN WEILL as it was depressing. At one point I asked one of the locals where all the women were. He responded that in Malawian culture women don’t go to bars. Then he said, “Sorry!” I responded, “Hey, don’t feel sorry for me, I just feel sorry for the women—they have to try and sleep with all this noise, and then deal with you!” Lesley ended up taking on one of the locals to a game of pool, and beat him handily—we had a nice moment of feminist solidarity 😊 while her opponent got mocked for losing to a girl. Three
mzungus in this tiny village definitely made for a major spectacle! People would wander over to the bar over the course of the evening, presumably to observe how white people behave—if they couldn’t afford to buy a drink and come in to see us up close, they would just stand outside and peer at us through the hole in the wall that functions like a window. Some decent Malawian music eventually came on and we were treated to some traditional dancing. Like in Senegal, it is no uncommon sight to see men dancing without women around—something you would
neversee at home
Waiting for the minibus
Or, how we almost ended up getting back to Lilongwe :) PHOTO COURTESY OF SEBASTIEN WEILL (well, o.k., except maybe in a gay club).
We eventually walked back home under the stars and went to bed. On Sunday we replicated our beach-bumming activities, and then I spent the afternoon reading in a hammock which I have to say must be one of my Top Five ways of spending time! We had a nice little dinner at the restaurant again, which despite being overpriced is really cozy. A fillet of chambo—the local lake fish—with fries cost around $9, but isn’t nearly enough to fill you up! So we supplemented our meals there with a bowl of pumpkin soup—which I had no idea I could stand, let alone enjoy—with along with a yummy, buttery roll cost 450 kwacha (about $3.25). Then we went to bed early so we could wake up in time to drive to Lilongwe and work a half-day in the afternoon.
We woke up around 6am on Monday and started loading up the car, and Mike noticed that one of the tires was flat! Hey, at least my car is consistent 😊. Luckily the hostel operates a scuba diving school, so the really cute South African instructor used his air pump to fill up the evil tire. We drove 20km north to Chinteche where we had been told there was a tire repair shop—more like a little shed with a bunch of tires thrown about, but they fixed up the tire and the spare in less than an hour, and for only $4!
We made it back to Lilongwe around 1pm, nicely tanned 😊. This was the same weekend that my friend Tayllor was arriving from the U.S. with a brand new replacement camera for me! So I didn’t have it for the weekend; the photos you see were taken on a later trip to Kande by my friend Sébastien aka Le Baguette Man whom you will meet a couple of blogs down the road 😊
Love,
Martina
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kpoms
non-member comment
beautiful
that place looks like a resort!! and hammocks are the best ever. instead of a sofa i'm gonna have a hammock put in.