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Published: January 17th 2008
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Hello everyone! A bit belatedly, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and happy new year's! I know its been a long time since we last posted, and since leaving our volunteer group in Zambia in the beginning of December, we've traveled to quite a few places. Since there is so much to catch up on, I thought I would try something a bit different, and just include some snippets of our adventures (in chronological order of course) over the past month and a half....
- Visiting and safariing with parents in Zambia and Botswana: walking into the Royal Zambezi and realizing we are not in backpacker land anymore; swimming in Victoria Falls and being sure one of us was going to go flying over; flying in a 5-person light aircraft into the Botswana national parks; being obsessed with dung beatles and termite mounds; stalking lionesses stalking prey; getting encircled and mock-charged by a herd of mama elephants; having to crouch and hide from a leopard during our walking safari; my dad's impromptu birthday party for our guide Derek; bonding time with my parents.
- Travelling from Zambia to Malawi: our 8-hour turned 18-hour bus ride from Lusaka to
Chipata, because the bus broke down three times, and the last time at midnight decided we were all going to have to sleep on the bus; fortunately getting a ride into Chipata at 3am by random strangers who we decided were okay because they were on their way to a church function.
- Arrival in Lilongwe- Yay! Finally meeting up with Ann and Jason; bugging them with a million questions about Malawi, Africa history and politics, and the refugee crisis; touring Lilongwe, which reminds me of a suburb of DC; getting a ride to the airport in Lilongwe in the back of an ambulance; the gorgeous Malawian landscape, where mountains appear as if they have been dropped randomly from the sky.
- Zanzibar, a paradise-like, muslim island, off the coast of Tanzania, where we spent Christamas Eve through New Years Day: meeting Mr. Banana, our favorite taxi driver; arriving at Shehe bungalows on Jambiani beach, where when the tide goes out every 8 hours, you can walk out on the sand for almost a mile; Ross promptly getting stung by a jellyfish; keeping up Christmas Eve tradition by reading The Night Before Christmas by head-lamp light; listening to
the waves crash against our bungalow in the middle of the night; walking out on the beach Xmas morning and discovering the magical seaweed farms, a real underwater farming community; decorating and then hanging out under our Christmas palm tree; our Christmas lobster dinner, which probably was what made us all sick; Ann and I getting our henna, a.k.a. ink tattoos; swimming with the dolphins without any dolphins; staying in Stonetown at St. Monica's, a beautiful renovated convent with lots of mosquitos and bedbugs; getting lost in the twisty maze of Stonetown; acquiring Jah, Ann and Andy's briefly adopted tiny kitten, found dodging the crowd at a Rasta club; returning to Jambiani beach for New Year's Eve with all sorts of grand plans, only to have it be much more low-key than expected- poor Ross and Ann were sick, Ross slept through midnight, but I stayed up at least till 1am, waxing philisophical with Jason and Andy over a bottle of champagne, talking about our hopes and expectations for 2008.
- Blantyre and Zomba Plateau, an incredible mountain area, higher than the clouds, on our way back to Lilongwe: Doogles Backpacker Hostel in Blantyre, where we recelebrated New Year's
Eve in proper form; making our taxi driver pissed by tricking him into driving us up the mountain; the trout farm in Zomba Plateau- the exact opposite of our Zanzibar beach vacation, but just as incredible all the same; watching the clouds roll in from our wooden, no-electricity, mountainside cabin; Ross making us pancakes the size of our head and then learning from Jason that peanut butter and hot sauce is an excellent combination; hiking up the mountain, passing waterfalls, jumping across streams, and precariously crossing a very rickety old bridge; having dinner with an amazingly intelligent Malawian teacher at the Sunbird hotel, only to fall asleep at the table in the middle of it.
- And Lilongwe, where we are finally living and working now: getting settled in the new apartment; getting immersed in the expat scene- a culture in and of itself; starting at Jesuit Refugee Service, where I have joined the psychosocial team and Ross is filling the trial-run advocacy position; planning the new and exciting mental health projects; walking through Dzaleka refugee camp, which looks like a large African village, and getting stopped constantly by people wanting to check out the new mzungus; being welcomed
with open arms and big smiles by people who have experienced war atrocities so horrific you can barely imagine; Ross spontanteously remembering how to speak French; our housewarming/ welcome party, which culminated in a 3am trip to the hospital after Ross, as described by the doctor, got his "3rd right toe, crushed by gate, nearly severed." Yes, at one point I did walk into the room to see his toe hanging from his toe, and now it looks like a pancake....
I hope I have given an idea of what we have been up to the past month and a half. We are really being here now in Malawi, with Ann and Jason, and getting to do work that is so hands on and meets our interests and areas of expertise. Our only other news, for those of you who don't yet know, is that we have extended out trip... to make time for Road Trip South Africa 2008. Since we have decided to stay here through the end of February, and we really wanted to have sufficient time to explore South Africa while we are here, we switched our return tickets, and our now scheduled to return a
month later on April 15th. That will give us almost exactly 6 weeks to rent a car and drive around South Africa and possibly even Mozambique. Road-tripping South Africa is supposed to be one of the best ways to see the country. We are really excited to end our trip this way, but it already feels like our two-month parameter on Malawi will be a bit of a constraint (especially in the counseling field, where short-term work can be kind-of limited).
Okay, until next time!
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