Malawi- 24/12
On Christmas eve, we crossed over the border into malawi, a country largely dominated by the lake its named after. Unfortunately we couldnt make it to the best campsite in time for christmas so we had to stop at chitimba beach which we were warned would be most unimpressive after the turqouise water and white sand s in Zanzibar. As it was it was a bit scummy! The beach was a dark dirtyish colour and the water was lake water that was quite brownish and smelled funny! To m,ake things worse they were suffering from a water shortage despite being two seconds away from a huge lake, so the toilets and showers didnt work, and we had to fetch lake water to wash up with, and it was really hot and infested with flies. We decided that since it was christmas wed get a roomn instead of camping and so we upgraded to a quite scummy but relatively cool and fly free room- with an ensuite that obviously didnt work since there was no water! However it did mean we could sleep in o christmas day as it was too hot and light for a lie in past six am in the tent! We were supposed to be organising a pig on a spit for christmas dinner but our inexperienced and disinterested tour leader was actually completely wasted for the whole four days of christmas and didnt organize anything so we had to be bailed out by another truck whod actually bought two huge turkeys and spent ages preparing and let us share- so we did have turkey for chrismas dinner and got to meet some people from a different truck, but a lot of people were very unimpressed with our tour leader as a result. the only thing tyhat we had organised was punch- which the boys created to fill a whole cool box, and dressing up out of a bag of wierd clothes in the truck, so we spent the whole day looking really stupid and mark had to wear a skirt for the day!
On boxing day we moved to Kande beach which was much better, with running water and everything! We spent two days there, with a tour of the village which was interesting but felt like we were only there to donate to them. The kids were particuarly delightful, holding hads with you and jumping along, although we were a bit worried that theyd gone way past their houses and wouldnt find their way back! Mark took part in a beach volleyball extravaganza organized by the more organized leader of the AOC truck and did quite well- getting to the semi final. Instead of dinner the kitty paid for us to go todinner at a local mans house(called himself mel gibson) which was quite interesting albeit dareisay absolutely disgusting and completely devoid of meat. However its probably good for us to have seen what the natives actually eat, even though every time I try it I feel really sorry for them. We sat iin a circle on mats outside his house and had some kind of spinach type green vegetable and a kidney bean concoction. the worrying thing is that milo said that would have been an impressive feast- type meal to them as they usually ate ugali (maize meal stodge) for every meal. Than they decided to entertain us by singing and dancing- basically the kids all just jumped around on the spot and repeated whatever he said, butit was quite sweet.
The thing to buy in Malawi is wooden chairs carved out of two pieces of wood in a criss cross shape so that the stand up and malawi tables on a tripod with a chess board on the underside of the flat part. They were all very ornately carved and you could have picked one up for 15$ but they were also huge and would have cost ten times that much to post so we couldnt buy one.
Jenny 11/2/05
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