Lazy Days in the Village


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Africa » Malawi
October 30th 2016
Published: October 22nd 2017
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Baboons in the lodge swimming pool
Geo: -12.0559, 34.7616

Sunday 30th October

Our lodge is on a small beach and is surrounded by a village. The only snag with this is that the locals all get up at sunrise (about 5am) and make lots of noise outside our little hut.
The main occupation is fishing, the men go out each evening in dubious looking boats and dug out canoes with nylon nets and led lamps which presumably attract the fish.
On return the smaller fish which look like sardines but are fresh water Usipa which are spread out on drying platforms in the sun. Once dry and quite crispy they are taken away in big plastic buckets, we have no idea what happens to them then. The bigger fish seem to be about 6 inches to 2 feet long and appear on most menus.

As in most African villages there are five times more children than adults and those in this village must be the cleanest children in Africa as they seem to spend all day in the water. What is great is that they all want to chat to you, they are encouraged to speak, politely, to strangers.

The women seem to spend a great deal of time washing clothes,
Baobab TreeBaobab TreeBaobab Tree

Friendly giants
it may be they take in washing from villages further away from the lake as Gill and I were in fits of laughter when we spotted one lady with several plastic buckets, each with an owners name, one of which was "nigger landis"

There are no coconut trees so the island does not conform to the standard tropical island, much better it is full of baobab trees, these are amazing, we have seen a few elsewhere in Africa but not quite so many.Baobabs are what I always imagine Tolkien used as his Ents, I have attached a picture of one, friendly giants of the tree world.

Tomorrow we may go for a walk to explore the island, not much danger of being run over by a car, there are only 13 on the island. The lodge does not have one, they picked us up from the ship in a boat along with 20 big bags of building lime the weight of which made the boat trip a bit scary.


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Gill and a small friendGill and a small friend
Gill and a small friend

Gill making a point to a local


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