I arrived in Malawi on Thursday, after only 15 or 16 hours of travelling... The flight was OK but came with the usual problems (Small seats, bad food, TV not working) but this was more than made up for in the flight from Nairobi to Lilongwe where the plane was very empty and so I was able to have 3 seats to myself, and have a proper sleep for a few hours rather than dose off wondering if I was going to fall on the guy on one side and the spectacular views of Kenya’s mountains out of the window. I [View Full Entry]

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The Lilongwe-Blantyre run is clearly the flagship bus route in all of Africa, as I pay $20 for a journey that's not even 4.5 hours - more noteworthy and incongruous is that the bus has AC and a toilet. For free, we get views of various inselbergs rising out of the green countryside. The landscape here really doesn't end with Lake Malawi. Blantyre is as lacking in cheap accommodation as Lilongwe, and I gravitate to the only place anyone ever mentions - Doogles. The staff are unfriendly and the rooms are poor value for money, but its proximity to the bus [View Full Entry]

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Construction in Malawi [View Full Entry]

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Zomba Plateaux [View Full Entry]

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Retail Therapy [View Full Entry]

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This month has been very SLOW. I guess looking at the pictures it appears that I have done a lot, but I feel like I have not. The students were supposed to arrive back to school January 5th. Unfortunately they have not yet returned. I do not want to get into too much detail right now because I think that things have become political with the elections coming up in a few months…but it all has to do with the student’s school fees. Anyway, the school year ends before the first week in April in all of the Christian Health Association [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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I don’t know what it is with my bathroom but it is like a Zoo! Well actually I do know what it is - the drain from the bath goes directly outside my bathroom window and directly into the drain it is clearly at sufficiently a shallow angle to allow any and all animals smaller than drain size to come in as well water to go out. On a more or less daily basis I have any number of bugs coming in. Of course you will know that spiders are my least favourite; but fortunately Steph is completely unphased by [View Full Entry]

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Truth be told - we are tired. The punishing bus journeys of Mozambique exhausted us. In one case, we were on the bus at 4 am and arrived to our destination at 6:30 pm. In hindsight (good ol' hindsight), we would have headed for Malawi after Vilankulos. The soul-crushing bus trips to the north and Ilha de Mozambique just weren't worth it in the end. Don't get me wrong, Mozambique Island is nice to visit, but only if you fly up the country. The journey to Nampula was very much like the rest of the bus trips - long, hot, uncomfortable [View Full Entry]

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I was walking home from the hospital the other day, and had a strange feeling - normalcy. It's similar to when I realized that I stopped looking up all the time while walking around Chicago after moving there. This doesn't feel like home, but it does feel like I live here, however transient. The driving isn't intimidating, the vendors aren't annoying, the beggars aren't surprising, my lack of anonymity isn't new. The last week was probably my best since I left. I spent three days at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe. Lilongwe is the capital of Malawi, about the size of [View Full Entry]

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