Hey Guys, In keeping with tradition I'll provide everyone a funny anecdote about the bus journey that got us to the place I'm currently blogging about. So there's this Canadian couple who are supposed to catch an 11am bus that doesn't show up until 2pm and then they are lucky to get standing room at the back of the bus for the 6hour ride. The bus proceeds to stop every 6km which accumulates to a total of 60 stops (Tyne counted) over the entire 300km trip which ends up taking 8hrs. While at all these random stops the people on the [View Full Entry]

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The bus ride to Mzuzu is a scenic one, in particular the part where we chug up some hills near the lake and see a magnificent panorama spread below us. I feel like I'm back in Ethiopia again when, 1.5 hours into the journey and hence with the entire bus on the verge of starvation, we stop for a meal break. I arrive in Mzuzu with no map and just two guesthouse names, one of which no-one has heard of. Fortunately this isn't Tanzania, though, and a random guy offers to take me to my second choice, which he duly does [View Full Entry]

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The WLP describes Nkhata Bay as "Caribbeanesque" then back-pedals and damns it with "quite picturesque". It's certainly (and thankfully) not as hot as the former but I'll give it the latter. It has the potential to be overrun by tourism but, with Malawi not on the tourist trail and with the nearest airport to Nkhata Bay 6 hours away by road, that won't happen any time soon. However it's certainly a backpacker destination and the number of smoking teenagers is overwhelming, with me not having seen such a quantity anywhere in Africa. My first accommodation is serenely peaceful and I fritte [View Full Entry]

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From the Malawi border, I take a shared taxi to the first proper town, Karonga. I'm squeezed into the back seat with two women, a man, and two children. They're remarkably cheerful at the addition of this large, sweaty foreigner to their vehicle, though one woman's opening comment to me, in lieu of a greeting, is that I should give some money to her child. Later in the journey she tells me I have such soft skin, accompanied by a gratuitous fondle of my upper arm, and I recommend to her Aveeno daily moisturising lotion with natural colloidal oatmeal. My arrival [View Full Entry]

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Below the surface of the ocean, a diver's senses are more aware. The only sounds you hear are the hissing of your air regulator and the bubbles gurgling out and up, eventually to the surface. Occasionaly another diver gently knocks into you and you feel their fins, or your own fins graze a piece of rock or coral. Light loses its colors the deeper you descend, so it's easy to see that you're diving deeper because objects turn a dark blue or gray. Most of the time when descending the water turns colder and when going up, the water is warmer. [View Full Entry]

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What a pleasant change from Mozambique. We left Liwonde at 9 am and arrived into Zomba by 10:30 am. We had checked into our resthouse, had breakfast and were starting to wander the town all by 11 am. Not only are the distances so much smaller in compact Malawi, but the landscape is completely different. The climate is more humid and the environment is much more green. There is also much more farming going on in Malawi, even from one border to the next, you can see that Malawi works the land more than Mozambique. Zomba was once the administrative capital [View Full Entry]

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Sorry for the delay, but here at last is my final entry. I'm now back in the UK enjoying the wind and rain. Sorry it's a bit of a long one. It was even longer before i edited it down. I left Nkhata Bay after a day of relaxing and wandering around. Butterfly Lodge had a very relaxed family-feel but the compost toilet was smelly. Travelled north by bus to the lakeside village of Chitimba, via Mzuzu. The bus ride to the lakeshore at Chitimba was hot and cramped but fairly short (only 2.5 hrs) and the scenery was enough of [View Full Entry]

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My tummy bug slowly cleared, and i took a lift in the back of a truck that a german family had hired to get to chipoka to meet the ferry on friday. The truck was 2 hours late arriving, leaving barely enough time to get to the port. It then ran out of petrol in the middle of lilongwe and we had to push it to a petrol station. Arrived at chipoka just before 4, when the boat was supposed to be leaving, and found that it was delayed by 4hrs. Sat in the waiting shed, having a couple of beers. [View Full Entry]

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By the strange whims of Malawian transport, the 12:30 Axa bus to Mzuzu - the poshest of the country’s bus lines - pulls into the Lilongwe depot at half-past eleven, its seats already full, its aisles crowded with buckets and bags of produce leaking onto the floor. After a placid morning at Mabuya Camp, a cup of coffee and a lazy hour spent sending emails, the day’s taken a turn for the oh-shit. Undeterred by the crush of bodies inside, the conductor is happy to take my fistful of kwacha, unswayed by my insistence that maybe anyone forced to stand for [View Full Entry]

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Mon 15th Sept, Hi again to everyone wherever you are. Especially hi to Rachael and Dave who are getting married this week! We’ll toast a beer to you from here in Malawi. All’s still going well. Work is still challenging, especially as I now seem to be running the Out-Patients Dept with just an interpreter most of the time. Because I am the only Dr within 100kms of here I am also getting a lot of the locals come down to the camp to see me for medical advice. Not least, the manager of Ripple Africa went down with quite severe [View Full Entry]

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