Well, it’s now 2008, and I get to reflect on my latest vacation adventure: a 3 week break over Christmas in Malawi and Mozambique. This post will be extremely long, so feel free to read it over several days or not at all. I’ll try to write it with good headlines so you can skip over the boring parts.
Part 1: Return to Malawi
I spent the first day in Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi. I got to visit with the McLeans, a Canadian family that has been here for a long while. Then I had dinner with the Gondwes. This was a bittersweet reunion, as they had lost their mother, Esnatt, this summer who succumbed to a lengthy battle with cancer. Mrs. G (as we called her) was a coworker and friend while I was here, and she is missed greatly by her family, friends, and by EI (where I worked). However, seeing the rest of the family again was nice, and I got to have a long awaited pool rematch with Emmitt, who had moved away to the UK shortly after I arrived in Malawi the first time.
Part 1: Return to Malawi
I spent the first day in Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi. I got to visit with the McLeans, a Canadian family that has been here for a long while. Then I had dinner with the Gondwes. This was a bittersweet reunion, as they had lost their mother, Esnatt, this summer who succumbed to a lengthy battle with cancer. Mrs. G (as we called her) was a coworker and friend while I was here, and she is missed greatly by her family, friends, and by EI (where I worked). However, seeing the rest of the family again was nice, and I got to have a long awaited pool rematch with Emmitt, who had moved away to the UK shortly after I arrived in Malawi the first time.
Return to Zomba
On the second day, I hopped on a mini bus for a 5-6 hour journey to Zomba. I was so excited to be returning to the place I called home for a year and a half that I wasn’t bothered at all by the typical African problems: not getting on the more comfortable and faster coach bus, wandering around in the rain to find alternative transport, having to switch buses because of breakdowns. I just kept smiling and enjoying the scenery. One highlight was when I was searching for breakfast and I came across a food stand with two sides. One side said “Nice Shop”. The other said “Cheap Shop”. I love Africa.
Upon arriving in Zomba, I met a few new CIDA interns, said hello to old coworkers and friends, and was told I needed to be ready for social squash in an hour. I was dreading a match with Mike, who had picked up the game in the past year and was reputedly getting much better. As feared, I was handily defeated. But I had fun, and it was great to see the squash gang again.
Prayer Day
Every month, the EI Malawi staff gather for pay day, and enjoy a meal together along with a few skits, a message, some songs, games, etc. Being as this was Christmas break, Prayer Day was a little bit different. For me, it was a great chance to see many of the staff from the field locations and say hello. And we held it at the lake, so it was also a chance for me to see lovely Lake Malawi once again. It was a fun time of fellowship, where I had a chance to play guitar and also to take part in a very elaborate game, organized by a Malawian, that was sort of a cross between Let’s Make a Deal, and the Price is Right. It was hilarious. While we waited for lunch, I reminded myself that I don’t know how to throw a Frisbee, and got to enjoy watching people playing beach volleyball with a basketball, and later with a soccer ball.
After the day was done, I gathered Mike and a bunch of the interns to head up to Zomba Forest Lodge for dinner. It is a tiny lodge nestled in the middle of the Zomba Plateau offering a cool atmosphere, great views of the sunset, and some of the best food I’ve had in Africa, or anywhere in the world for that matter. The meal was truly amazing, just as I remembered. I plied the crowd with some wine and they were kind enough to give me audience for a couple of new songs I’ve been writing. It was a wonderful evening, all in all.
The following day, Mike and I ventured to Blantyre (Malawi’s biggest city) to do some shopping and to try and play some golf. Unfortunately, between rain and the inability to rent left handed clubs (though there were plenty of caddies who would have offered to carve me a set if I was willing to wait), we weren’t able to golf. Another surprising thing to me was that even though I’m making more money now, I still couldn’t justify the cost of some of the things I passed on while I was in Malawi, though I did pay a relative small fortune to purchase some Reese Peanut Butter cups that I happened upon at an overpriced import shop.
We headed back to Zomba to meet the interns who graciously offered to cook us dinner, and joined them to watch High Fidelity (on a side note, I stumbled across the book that inspired this movie and just finished reading it, and this combo would make my all time top 5 list of books that were turned into movies, at least of ones where I’ve both seen the book and read the movie) Actually, that reminds me, if any of you have a copy of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (the book), that is a must read from what I hear. But I digress. I finished off the evening by introducing Mike to Ron White, one of my favourite comedians.
On Sunday, we had a lazier day, playing some squash in the morning and watching the Seinfeld biography Comedian in the afternoon. On another side note, I deliberately brought a bunch of movies that I had been raving about to Mike the first time we were in Malawi, so he could see what the fuss was about. In the evening, I was invited to dinner with Daniel and his family. Daniel is the Malawian that I trained to replace me as Finance Director. It was nice to meet his wife and children, and some children of relatives that were in for the holidays. We had a good chance to catch up and talk shop for a bit, and he seems to have settled in quite well, which makes me very pleased.
Afterwards, I caught the end of a carol sing at the Jones’ (my boss), and managed to arrive just in time for desserts and socializing, where I got to see a few more familiar faces. Our evening ended on a rather exciting note, as we managed to get stuck in the mud while driving someone home. With the help of 6-7 men and a few kwacha later, we were able to get home.
Well, I’m finally up to Christmas Eve. I thought about being more brief with this recap, but I figure I don’t have that big of an audience, so I figure I can ramble. And there was lots of stuff that I want to remember. Anyhow, we played some more squash in the morning (I only managed to win 2-3 games from Mike the entire trip, so I clearly need more practice), and then watched one of my favourite Christmas movies in the afternoon, Die Hard. J We managed to work our way into an invitation to have dinner on Christmas Eve at the Joshua’s house. I knew them because they housed my friend Ann when she was in Malawi, so it was nice to see them again. We had some wonderful evening food and some nice fellowship.
Christmas Day
Finally, we have reached Christmas day! On the spur of the moment, Mike and I got up on Christmas morning, and decided to hit the golf course. I hadn’t swung a club in 6 months, but somehow managed to play quite well, even parring the first hole. It was definitely the best round of golf I’ve ever shot on Christmas Day. After the round, we still had a few hours before dinner, so we decided to watch Die Hard 2, my other favourite Christmas movie. It was great to hear Let it Snow at the end, but I really wasn’t all that sad that it didn’t snow on Christmas. We had a wonderful Christmas dinner at the Jones’ place, where I stuffed myself on ham, which is sadly unavailable in Sudan. It was sad to be away from family, as always, but it sounds like they had a good day, and I will see them all soon enough when I come to visit in May, when hopefully the snow will be gone and it will be warmer.
Part 2: Mozambique
So, Mike and I got up early on Boxing Day to start our drive to Mozambique. The trip there went about as well as we could have hoped. No border problems, we never got lost, the roads were pretty good for the most part (except for one very bad stretch that we had already planned for) The views while driving were great, and the rains made for some awesome sky colours, as Mike had to listen to me try to explain that one of my favourite colours is the blue/grey colour that the sky turns just before a really bad storm. 13 hours later, we arrived at our stop point for the evening, where I ordered a steak and was shocked to get 2!! T Bone Steaks for my $8. Mind you they were tiny, thin, and fairly low grade, but the fact that I got two made me quite happy. We weren’t really into trying to explore the town after a 13 hour drive, so we split a bottle of wine at the hotel and watched a Mystery Science Theatre episode. If you don’t know about this show, then you should.
Day 2 involved a relatively short drive to our first destination: Ilha de Mozambique. It was a less touristy place on the ocean including some great history. The first thing we discovered is that finding English speakers was harder than expected, as most people speak only Portuguese. Fortunately, my limited French and Spanish helped me pick out a few of the basics. The first lunch, we were able to figure out that we were ordering chicken, but really had no idea how it would be prepared or what it would come with. Fortunately, it turned out to be very good. Dinner was a little less successful. Mike never got his meal due to some horrible misunderstandings, and I got what I ordered, a “simple hamburger” which turned out to just be a hamburger patty. Nevertheless, it was a good first day.
We started the second day by exploring some of the history on the island, including an old fort that was used centuries ago during war times. There was also an old church that was one of the oldest buildings in the southern hemisphere.
Finally, there was a very cool museum there where I got some really neat pictures before someone alerted me to the no camera rule. Over lunch, we met up with some other Canadians passing through, and laughed about the general lack of tourists on the island and the lack of English. We found a pool at a nearby hotel to lounge by for the afternoon, before sampling some fantastic prawns for dinner. The group of Canadians was heading to Pemba a day ahead of us, so we said our goodbyes and promised to look them up in a couple days.
The next day we took a boat trip out to a small beach off shore. The beach was nice and the swimming in the ocean was fantastic, but the lack of the shade on the beach caused me to get severely sunburnt despite frequent sunscreen applications (it seems that waterproof sunscreen is not saltwater proof)
Pemba
On Dec 30th, we drove to Pemba, a tourist destination on the coast which was about a 5 hour drive away. We got there, linked up with our Canadian friends, and found some cheap one star accommodation until we got settled the next day. On New Year’s Eve, we upgraded our accommodation and did some exploring of the beach. We met another Canadian, Shannon, who is working in Mozambique, and made plans to link up later for a New Year’s Eve party. I enjoyed a nice time of reflection on 2007 in a lounge chair overlooking the ocean. We had trouble finding a place to eat dinner since most places had large New Year’s Eve gatherings, but we managed, and then ventured out in the rain to have a drink with our Canadian friends before heading out to the New Years party.
The party was an entertaining mix of shelter under construction, people who had been partying all day, horrible DJed music (including, sadly, the Macarena which still manages to get people to dance for some strange reason). Then after 2 countdowns (the slightly inebriated folks couldn’t seem to agree on the time), the New Year was marked by the same inebriated folks setting off some rather dangerous looking but mildly entertaining fireworks. We turned in shortly thereafter as we had aspirations of snorkeling the next morning.
On New Years Day, we were awoken by the sounds of people still partying into the morning. The revelers were finally halted by a large rainstorm, which sadly turned up the water and made snorkeling impossible for that morning (as well as the fact that the snorkeling boat crew was mysteriously absent from work early New Years morning) So, given that nothing else was open, Mike and I went to the fancy hotel and splurged on the all you can eat breakfast buffet, where we paced ourselves through a large feast of mounds of bacon, croissants, omelettes, more bacon, fruit, etc. It was wonderful. The rest of the day was a lazy day spent poolside with Mike and Shannon.
The following day we were finally able to get in some amazing snorkeling in the Ocean. I love seeing fish in their natural habitats, along with coral and other cool things of the ocean.
Having completed what we came for, we headed home over the next couple of days, arriving back in Malawi and stopping for pizza at the base of Mulange, the largest mountain in Malawi. We then met up with the other girls who had gone to Zambia, and we swapped stories for a while. All in all it was a great trip to the coast and a great way to bring in the new year.
Part 3: Leaving Malawi again
Once we got back from Mozambique, I still had a few days to say goodbye to old friends (and new ones I made) in Malawi. Some highlights:
- my boss got great pleasure from beating me at golf (it might have been the first time that happened) It seems my first round was a fluke, as I proceeded to play two very bad but fun rounds of golf before I left.
- In the second round I played, the highlight was when we had to pause on the third hole to try and coax a snake out of a hole in the ground and kill it. I kept a good distance and never really did find out what was going on, but it involved burning grass, long sticks, probably a panga knife.
- Saw a driving school car with the words “Leaner driver” in bold letters on the back. I love the signs in this country.
- Had dinner and played more squash with Lars, a friend from Denmark. He always has a very direct way of speaking that never fails to crack me up. He’s frustrated that he can’t beat my boss at squash, because as he says “I am getting in better shape, but he is just getting older and fatter.” Hilarious.
- ending my Zomba time by taking in the sunset with some friends.
Anyhow, overall it was an amazing trip, that allowed me to recall many great memories of my time there, and allowed me to add some new memories to that list. Now it’s back to full speed at work, while I get to look forward to my next adventure: coming home for a visit in May to celebrate Mother’s Day, my sister’s birthday, and the marriage of one of my closest friends. If you’re in Canada and you’re reading this, I can’t wait to see you then. If you’re somewhere else in the world, let me know where and maybe I can come visit sometime in the next couple of years. One of many things I love about working here is that I have the time to take a break and check out part of the world every few months. I miss you all, and hope to see you soon, or talk to you sooner!
