Days 23-29: Malawi with ‘Cheap as Chips wood carvings’, pig on a spit, and fresh goat; and fortune telling with a witchdoctor

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<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Days 23-29: Malawi with ‘Cheap as Chips wood carvings’, pig on a spit, and fresh goat; and fortune telling with a witchdoctor

Hi all, it’s been too long between posts, we apologise...TIA. Grab a large coffee this time.

Looking back since our last entry takes us to Malawi, known for its warm hearted people and a lake that takes up over 25%!o(MISSING)f their country. The drive into our campsite Kande Beach was an eye catching one – mountains, water, and locals on the side of the road selling random goods, something we are getting used to. A box full of warm soft drinks, biscuits, nuts, or a corn cooked on the coals stuck to the end of a six foot stick so it can be put under your nose as you wait for traffic to die down. I was rather chuffed with myself – I scored a big bag full of fresh passionfruit for less than $2. They kept us going for days. We arrived into Kande Beach, with the local ‘beach boys’ straight away waving to us as we drove through their village to our campsite. Alex and I upgraded for the night, to a very basic beach hut with a small wooden open-out door which looked straight out onto Lake Malawi. The hut had a bed only, but the view and no tent pitching was a good compromise. We didn’t waste any time in testing out the fresh water and it was much appreciated. It is a beautiful lake, and it felt like you were looking out at the ocean it is so big. The lake is also known as the Calendar Lake as it is 365 by 52 miles in dimension, or the Lake of Stars, described by Livingstone when he visited there in the 1950’s. For dinner that night we were taken to a local named Roger’s house for a traditional dinner. We all ate in his living room, on straw mats by candlelight. We were all sitting cross legged on the floor. I felt like I was being squeezed into a small box, with my legs draped around candles, pots, and everyone else. It was a little different to the kitchen table. The food was great - spinach, chicken, rice and karva sweet potato soup. I also dodged a flying candle thanks to a timely catch from Gary. Post dinner we were entertained by the locals singing and dancing for us, including all of us one by one having a dance off with the young kids. The kids were as young as two and boy could they dance. So I was definitely in my element…..NOT! They also sang their national anthem for us in their local tongue (Tonga) as well as in English and three of the young boys performed the NZ Haka. I had to visit the toilet while I was there, and I was politely ushered by Roger to a tin roofed small mud hut at the back of his garden, where I entered what I thought was a neat curtained entrance to find a muddy covered squatter long drop. Wasn’t expecting that one!

The next morning we were up early to watch our dinner for the night, a pig, being slaughtered. Can’t say it’s something I have ever seen before, and not something I was entirely looking forward to. But if I continually eat meat, then I said to myself I should be seeing this. We had the option of killing it ourselves, no thanks. It was a quick death for the poor pig…that’s enough detail for you. Within a short space of time it was de haired, gutted and put over hot coals on the spit cooking, held in its different positions by a bamboo stick fixed into the sand. While this had been happening, Alex was in her element with all the young village kids, laughing and playing with them. We got some great photos that day and all the kids seemed to be having a blast. In the afternoon, Alex and I paid our hassling beach boy Billy $18 to take us out to the island for some snorkelling. After nearly getting stuck in his tree carved canoe trying to get in, we set off for the island. I was then handed a half plastic milk carton and told to continually bail water, realising whenever I didn’t we were quickly filling with water and slowly sinking. Alex sat nicely at the front enjoying the ride. Our driver certainly had his work cut out carting us both across. Maybe we felt sorry for him and that influenced us swimming the way back, about 800m. Snorkelling with leaking masks (TIA) was just something to do whilst we were out there, but we mostly just enjoyed being out there and jumped off the rocks into the water instead. In the late afternoon we did a group village tour, where we were shown around their local village, seeing their school, medical centre and housing. It was an eye opener, especially their medical area – they had a maternity ward consisting of a small room with old metal beds, mozzie nets and seemingly very minimal hygiene practices. There was one trained medical nurse. It is a completely different world the people here live in, and you are just speechless at the lack of basic services they have access to. We visited the local primary school where the principal talked to us. We donated paper and pencils. On our long and humid walk back we also saw the making and grinding of karva, a common food eaten by the villagers. I also tried balancing a bucket on my head like the females do whilst they multi-task ten other things. There I was thinking I had it perfectly balancing when a local girl was actually holding it from behind.

We arrived back at camp, very hot and sweaty, to the rest of the group salivating to eat the pig. It was a great meal – with roast potatoes, grilled vegies and the ladies had made fresh apple sauce to go with the pork. We all tucked in like there was no food for a week. I washed it down with some banana beer that I had bought from the locals…interesting stuff! That night Alex and I left our hut for our tent again.

We said goodbye to Kande Beach the following morning and made our way up north along the edge of Lake Malawi to a place called Chitimba. Along the way we stopped off at a busy market town which Alex described as ‘Brixton on steroids’. It was an experience walking through the market, down narrow mud walkways, with music going and the locals selling all sorts of things. We bought five mangoes for the cost of $1. Our group also bought chicken legs to eat with our dinner one night. Some of the locals weren’t too happy with you taking photos or video there, while others were happy to flex their muscles and pose for photos. A few hours later we arrived at Chitimba. It was a beautiful campsite and we were to enjoy two nights here and also spend a lot more money than we had anticipated! The locals had their wood carving stalls right outside the gates to the campsite and I had bought a wood carving within an hour of being there, and I was only swimming in the water! Their sales pitches happen anywhere you go. We were taken aback with the quality of the carvings when we had a look around in the afternoon, and also by the sellers names – ‘Cheap as Chips’, ‘Mr Vegemite’, ‘Cheese on Toast’, ‘Swagger’….The next day we gathered together our finances and got ready to do some hustling with Mr Vegemite, who had some nice wood carvings and also Swagger. It was a great experience buying all of our carvings, and we were happy with the prices we paid. We paid them what we thought they were worth and although I’m sure we could have got them cheaper we didn’t want to feel like we were trying to squirm every last Kwacha out of them. I now have been given the task by Alex of transporting this stuff back to London, fingers crossed it is hassle free.

That morning we had a quiet one, where Alex reports going for a leisurely lakeside stroll, to be then told by Swagger shouting ‘Mr Simon’s girlfriend – you are walking on your own where the crocodiles are’….don’t think Alex was expecting that one. Swagger kindly escorted her back to camp safely.

In the afternoon Alex and I went to visit the local tribe’s witchdoctor – to learn of our spirits and fortunes. This was something else – out comes the witchdoctor dressed in a red outfit with a white medical cross on his chest. He then pulls out a tiny glass jar full of some sort of tobacco which he snorts up his nostril. He had metal tin cans tied around his waist, where he then, to the beat of his wife and a group of kids playing music, danced for us. Apparently he also dances like this when he needs help to gather spirits to help him diagnose and treat sick people. We had our fortunes told – lives of good health, good jobs, good friends, which was very relieving to find out for sure! Alex will have 2 girls and a boy after she gets married. We were talked through his cardboard box full of potions, which included love potion-9 and 13. I also reported my attack of mozzie bites to the witchdoctor, which he meticulously assessed and offered to give me a potion for 2000 Kwacha that would fix them within 2-3 days. I decided to save my money and talk to the spirits instead.

That night we had a fresh goat for dinner, made into a goat curry by Josh, our Kenyan truck driver. Gary/Gazza had mercilessly slaughtered it that morning, and I tried my hand at skinning it for a while. It was tasty stuff. For the price of this tour, the food we have been having has been amazing, and we have Sarah our tour leader to thank for that. When we have eaten out it is rarely better than the meals we have cooked daily for us. Post dinner was spent at the bar enjoying a few drinks, followed by joining up with two other groups to play some beach volleyball. It was a late night and good times, with some not even sleeping as we were up at 4am the next morning for the first of two long driving days.

We crossed the border into our sixth country Tanzania and overnighted in Iringa after a long day on the road, where the highlight there was a really cool little chill out bar area. We enjoyed Amurula hot chocolates that were delicious. This night I remember counting over 80 barstard mozzie bites on my feet….Alex counted 18 on her feet….I also remember waking up in the night thinking my foot was going to fall off I was itching that much.

The following day was another long driving day, with the end point being Dar es Salaam . We arrived in good time, and we were all stinking hot. I jumped straight into the ocean, and it was strange tasting salt water after having being swimming in the fresh water of Lake Malawi days earlier. The humidity here was something else. I don’t think anyone could say they had anything resembling a normal sleep. The ocean temperature must have been getting close to 30 degrees so the air blowing on us was not the cooling sea breeze you are used to. The following morning we were all up bright and early, packed for as Alex described our ‘holiday within a holiday’ – heading off to Zanzibar Island. We were all squeezed into tuk-tuks, three of us at the back. Half asleep and dark, I remember shooting off out of the campsite, and racing each other down to the ferry. I think we should bring these Tuk-Tuks to Australia, would make driving in peak hour much easier.

A few hours later, we were on the other side of immigration and in Zanzibar. Zanzibar is now a separately governed state from the mainland of Tanzania, although it is still one country. It was previously known as Tanganyika before it officially joined with Zanzibar to become Tanzania in 1965. Tanzania is reportedly a country with a lot of potential. 90%!o(MISSING)f their kids are in school. I met a young lawyer on the ferry back from Zanzibar a few days later and he came across as an ambitious lawyer. He asked me to proof read a few of his quotes he was sending off to potential clients…I did it free of charge, TIA. Tanzania has supported refugees over the years, such as helping 160,000 Burundi people become local citizens. Zanzibar Island is made up of 98%!M(MISSING)uslim people, compared to about 30%!o(MISSING)n the mainland. The drive from off the ferry to our accommodation for the next two nights on Nungwi Beach was a good one. There were lots of cattle driven wooden carts on the side of the road, and groups of Hijab clad young girls in their matching school uniforms. The Arab/Muslim influence was also noticeable with the style of housing being different.

To be continued by Alex........

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