Beachlife!!!

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Day 15 - Chitimba (Malawi) - 13/8/09

Another early start, this time around 0600. Found my flip flops; they were left outside my tent. Climbed onto the great big green truck for now, the almost routine long drive though the African bush, was really looking forward to reaching another country, country number 3, Malawi. Again I fell asleep for a couple of hours, then when I was awoken by the sun beams burning my legs though the windows, finished reading my book, which I then swapped with Duncan. He was reading Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's Long Way Down. It seemed, given where I was almost fitting that I should be reading it. I managed to knock back 100 pages pretty quickly then we got some card games going. We counted up how many Tanzanian Shillings we had left as Moses told as that at lunch, a gentleman by the name of Mike would be meeting us to change them into Malawian Kwacha's at a rate of 1000 Schillings = 100 Kwacha. We stopped for lunch and changed money with Mike the Malawian Money Man as I started to call him. From there it was only a few minutes to the border; Moses gathered everybody’s passports and got everybody stamped out of Tanzania. Having been stamped out of Tanzania, we walked over to the immigration hut for Malawi, where I was greeted by a rather right moany cow; she must have been having a really bad day or something. She didn’t have a stamp and the other ladies in immigration were busy with people and she was shouting with a rather loud voice for a stamp to be passed over. When one of the ladies eventually, did pass the stamp, she stamped my passport with so much force I though the desk was going to spilt in half!! The rest of the day was spent back on the truck playing cards; the scenery was more lush then that in Tanzania. We had to stop when a rather large and jovial police officer boarded the truck interested in what we were all doing. He asked as what game we were playing and we invited him to sit and play a hand; he refused instead taking an interest in what one of the Australians were drinking. He was hiding a glass bottle between his legs, which happened to be a beer bottle, he was told in no uncertain terms that he shouldn’t be drinking beer on the vehicle but it was left at that. We continued onto the campsite and we were able to pitch our tents on a patch of grass overlooking a sandy beach on Lake Malawi. Dinner was a beautiful vegetable curry then the evening turned into one of Kuchi Kuchi beer and card games, like always! As we didnt need to get up early and take the tents down the session lasted till midnight!

Day 16 - Chitimba - 14/8/09

The day started earlier then planned as I forgot to put my mobile onto Malawian time; an hour back. My alarm went off at 0730 Tanzanian time meaning at 0630 Malawian time; breakfast was at 0800. I tried to get back to sleep with little success. After breakfast I paid to do a village walk though the local village. Firstly, we stopped at the guides’ house and were introduced to his family. He also told us about the Cassava plant, which is the staple crop grown around here. Next, we walked though the local school, sitting down with the headmaster and the deputy head, having a conversation about the state of education in Malawi. Outside Harry was giving out sweets and the kids were swarming all around him acting like the Pied Piper. The head was telling us how there's 1200 kids and only 10 teachers; that’s 120 kids to a teacher and they say things are bad in the UK, we complain when the class gets above 20! The kids all wanted to play football with us and simply to play with them whilst all the head wanted to do was to show us all the school classrooms. It was great to see the faces of all the kids light up, they were just so happy to play with us. We wondered down the road; down to the witch doctor. We got ushered into this little room and we were joined by two guys with bongo's which they started to play. Out came the witch doctor and he started to dance. After all the introductions were done he dragged all of us up to dance with him; it was a weird experience! Then we got treated into a witch doctor 101, being told about and shown all the different types of potions; here's the first witch doctor 101 lesson, hope your paying close attention - Love Potion 7 is for existing relationships; to make them stronger whilst Love Potion 9 is to help attract somebody to you. We all paid for a reading for a laugh, the witch doctor told me that my trip to Africa would be safe, my parents and my girlfriend miss me and after 2 years off being married we would have 3 kids; 2 girls and 1 boy. Rubbish!

After being fed the rubbish from the witch doctor we walked down to a local health clinic and witnessed the medical facilities (or lack of them) that the locals had. Despite the desperate situation the doctor remained upbeat saying the Malawian government were investing into the system.

The rest of the day was simply spent chilling and relaxing, sitting on Lake Malawi and playing volleyball. I had slightly improved from Zanzibar, not by much though. After dinner we drank more beer, played more card games and I managed to lose my camera!

Day 17 - Kandy - 15/8/09

Woke up and the first thing I did was to go to the bar and speak to the manager to see if my camera had been handed in. Apparently I had left it in the toilet and one of the nightwatchmen had taken it and not handed it in. They were at the police station until like 0230 in the morning. Like normal the coach journey seemed to take for ever and wasn’t helped by a stop in Mzuzu. The stop was a supply / toilet / cash stop lasting an hour. We all did our business and got back on the truck, whilst we were waiting for Moses, I was having friendly banter with the local hawkers who were trying to sell us stuff we didn’t want, I was having particular fun trying to sell off the girls on the truck, seeing who would offer me the highest price. I got 1,000,000 Malawian Kwacha for Cat, Duncan's wife.

We arrived at Kandy beach at 1300, got the tents up and jumped into the lake. This campsite is actually on the beach, which is awesome! Later on we played even more volleyball and talk off sailing boats being rented out tomorrow. We ate, arguably the best meal so far - pork, potatoes and vegetables and it was yummy! Like pretty much every other evening the night’s activities revolved round the bar. Tom arranged a blackjack tournament with the buy in of a beer using bottle tops for chips; I managed to be first out on both occasions. The night got older and the conversation took a sharp turn down hill pretty quickly with the amount of beer bottles on the table increasing!

Day 18 - Kandy - 16/8/09

Can’t believe that now it’s nearer the end of this tour rather then the beginning of it. We woke up to a breakfast of boiled eggs and toast after which we played beach cricket using a tennis ball and an oar. It was overcast today and Lake Malawi was very rough compared to yesterday; big waves and strong currents. Me and Tom got a couple of body boards out and we tried to ride the waves with little success. It was freezing cold and the waves were dragging us underwater at every opportunity. We tried just using our bodies but still with no success so we just decided to try and jump over the waves. We pissed around for a couple of hours. The rest of the day was spent chilling on the beach with another game of volleyball thrown in for good measure. In the time honoured tradition the night was spent with a bottle of beer and I played a few frames of pool, showered and was tucked up relatively early.

Day 19 - 17/8/09

Basically the truck journey was the same length in time and distance to be travelled as yesterday. The same activities were indulged in on the journey; listening to music and reading, though we did almost tape Aussie Mike up to a seat for a laugh. He was being so loud that people could hear him over their iPod’s. To put it in some kind of perspective he's a bit like grandpa Simpson; he can be funny but mostly he is annoying. We stopped off by a supermarket to buy some supplies. The highlight of the stop was meeting some local kids who were selling some rice samosas for 10 kwacha's each; that 4p each! They were so tasty I had two. We arrived at the campsite fairly early on and unlike at the other campsites we only had 1 day here; the tents got set up pretty quickly and Moses suggested a game of beach football. This was made all the harder by the sand dunes directing the ball in all kind of directions, making my life as a goalkeeper very hard. My life was also made hard by the cuts I had of the soles of my feet, I picked these up during one of the games of volleyball and they only seemed to hurt when I walked on sand! The rest of the evening was kind of quite; dinner was non descript, only being improved by Robin knocking up a bowl of popcorn before hand. The night was spent in the bar playing Killer Darts, basically the rules were you had to score higher then the person before you, if you didn’t you lost a life. You had three lives.

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Photos

Bar ....
Where we spent 'ALL' our nights on the campsite

Fisherman Boat
A Boat left in the Village

Goal!!!!
A Football Pitch African Style

The Heavyweight Champion Of The World
The New Apollo Creed lol

School Time Continued
The Head Poses For A Picture

The End Of The VIllage Walk
Walking To The Campsite Along Lake Malawi

Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang
The Witch Doctor