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Published: January 29th 2009
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So I haven’t updated my blog in a while……
The rains have well and truly come. For a couple of weeks before Christmas it rained almost constantly and I was beginning to think that my plans for Christmas by the lake would be a literal wash out; and was feeling rather bad at having invited Sarah to come and spend the time with me just to look at the rain. There were absolutely no signs of Christmas anywhere in Malawi - well save the guy in the Santa hat in Blantyre in November and carols in Shoprite - you would never have known it was Christmas time. On Christmas Eve there was a torrential rain storm and there was a power cut from about 4 in the afternoon. Eventually about 8:30 I gave up and went to bed. I got up at around 5am on Christmas morning and packed a bag and walked down to the end of the road to catch a minibus to Lilongwe and it was extremely hot; even then, at around 6 or 6:30.
A midsized minibus came fairly shortly and I got on - but I soon discovered it was the slowest bust
in the world….it was an old hopper bus shipped over from England which still had signs for £13.70 to Redbridge on the windscreen. I sat patiently as we inched our way towards Lilongwe; stopping at every village en route to try; while the conductor tried to garner more business. I didn’t arrive in Lilongwe until about 2pm - Sarah was due into the airport at 12! First time in Africa and your friend isn’t there to meet you at the airport - Eek!
However, Margie who I had hired a car from met me in town and gave me the hire car I’d arranged with her and I made my way through Lilongwe to the airport to pick Sarah up. We did what seems to be an emerging pattern of jumping into the car and driving so lost in catching up after such a long time that neither one of us remembers to consult the map and make sure we know where we are going. Fortunately we were stopped at a police block about an hour north of the airport where after exchanging the customary greetings the police man asked where we were going and mentioned that the road
would be coming up shortly on our right - well that didn’t sound right to me - but of course we had driven north not east out of Lilongwe; which then meant that we had to drive through national park to get to Nkhota Khota and had taken a route which added about 1 ½ hours to the journey. Not that it mattered too much and we arrived at Ngala Lodge just as dusk was falling.
We sat down straight away and opened our presents - I don’t think I’ve ever done so well! I had wonderful pampering goodies for the bath and luxurious foods and even a package from New Zealand. My family had more or less taken up all of Sarah’s luggage allowance with the most wonderful array of things and Sarah had filled much of the rest with things like pesto and cheese…..mmmmmmy!
Ngala was absolutely beautiful. Sandi and Chris the proprietors have only recently taken over the lodge and are refitting and rebuilding it, in beautiful taste. The view across the lake and across the bay towards the hills of Mzuzu is stunning. The food was great and the rooms were lovely. We were
thoroughly looked after for the whole time we were there and we moved only very little. Sarah and I just spent the week chatting having the odd swim and reading books. It was very restful indeed. One afternoon Chris took us out on a little catamaran which was great fun, and later that evening Sarah and I joined Sandi and an AVI volunteer also called Sandi on a girls night out on a little put-put boat over to the lagoon, to see if we could see any hippos or crocs; but none were to be seen.
The lake has a strange phenomenon called Lake Fly, which are clouds of small flies which just get carried along by the wind and when they reach land they stick to anything they land on. The local villagers rush out with their baskets and fill them from the trees and fry them up for supper. Local people tend to confuse their l’s and r’s and so we took to calling Ngala “rake fry rodge”. They tend to only come into shore at the end of the dry season at a full moon but there were a few clouds around, which at first site
seemed to look like clouds of dark smoke rising from the lake ad it took me some time to connect what I’d heard about the rake fry and these dark clouds. Apparently you cannot manage to sail through a thick cloud of them. One day Sarah and I were driving back from Nkhota Khota and came across a village which had just had the fortunate experience of having a cloud land close by and all the ladies and children of the village were rushing out with any baskets they could lay their hands on to collect them.
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Anne
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How are you?
Dear Pennie Heard you're comming home. Hope you are well. Heard some that made me worried from Sarah. I do hope it's not serious. Please take care and hope to see you this year! Love Anne