Blogs from Malawi, Africa - page 32

Day 3 We had a chilled morning, quick swim in the lake and then collected our clothes from town. As we were walking down the road we ran into Matt and Tim again. They were heading to Mayoka. The party started early with a free lunch of Nsima (pap), beef stew, beans and veg. We played a round or two of killer pool while chatting and having a few drinks. The party continued well into dinner and after. It was good to see Tim and Matt again - with the hilarious, classic Tim quotes. They also got along really well with Jen, Naomi, Grant, Edward and Matt - so our group is expanding. We all went for a sunset cruise on the lake. It was so beautiful. Naomi and I pushed Tim in and then ... read more

Day 1 Rasta Kelvin's Restaurant After we had checked into Mayoka Village (the same place Don and I had stayed almost a month before), we decided to go for lunch at Rasta Kelvin's up the road. What I had forgotten however is that you need to pre-order food because it takes so unbelievably long to cook - 2-3 hours minimum. We must have arrived at about 12 and only got to eat at 4:30 - but it was a very chilled way to spend the afternoon. Later on Grant and Edward arrived, so our little family was back together again. Even though we had eaten we went with Grant and Edward to dinner in town. We went to a local restaurant called H&M (Harry and Maria - husband and wife). Matt, a South African guy ... read more

Day 2 Snorkelling We negotiated with some of the local guys on the beach to hire a boat for 9 of us to take us to the little Momba island to go snorkelling (MK780 each) and then another MK400 per person for food which was a lot of rice, tomatoes and braai-grilled fish - it was really good. The snorkelling was so different to anything I have seen before - lots and lots of tiny fish - blues, yellow, black. It was so nice to be in the water and with fins and mask. After snorkelling they took us around to look at the Kingfishers. The locals throw fish into the water and call the birds - they then swoop down and catch the fish out the water - its incredible to watch. Party on the ... read more

I spent an entire day trying to go from Chipata (Zambia) to Monkey Bay (Malawi). I caught a private taxi to the border with two English girls I met, then another one to Mchiniji in Malawi. From there I caught a minibus (matola) to Lilongwe. On the mini bus I met Mike, a young Malawian who was heading to Salima. We caught a bus to Salima, a minibus to Golomoti, another one to the middle of nowhere (a storm hit and we had to wait in this random little town until another minibus came past) and then finally one last one to Monkey Bay. Luckily Mike was with me and helped translate from & into Chichewa (Malawian language) where needed. He is the son of a pastor of a church in Lilongwe and was very good ... read more

Settling in Nkhata Bay: The last time I wrote, we had just gone back to Nkhata Bay to put some more time into supporting SUPOCHO and the computer school. We were there for a week and it was an important time. We made a decision not to go all the way down to Mulanje to see the beautiful sights of the mountain and tea plantations. Basically, the constant travelling gets very wearing after a while and we both want to put as much effort as we can into helping SUPOCHO set up as possible. So we are presently travelling slowly down to Blantyre so we can visit the IT Schools Africa project worker there. We are hoping the lap tops will have arrived from Mozambique, but at the last communication 2 days ago, they still hadn't ... read more