How are you? I sure dont miss the holiday crazyiness that's probably occuring. Today Im going x-mas shopping in the capital city, Lilongwe, its a cloady, cool, drizzily Sunday afternoon. Such a great shopping day. This weekend has been pretty awesom all together. I spent last week, suffering in Chulu village. I was not in the mood to start fires, so I ate raw ramen, and rolls for every meal. I did do some work, met my friends and tried to find my cat, Zambo, who is missing for 2 weeks now. I put up reward posters for him, and was laughed at by all. Then last Friday, I came back to civilization and met george and rob for a late night malawian night club adventure, dancing with Hules(whores) . There such nice girls and real respectable-like. My friends were acting stupid as always, pouring ketchup on each other and fighting in the bar. Then yesterday, Saturday, Rob and I spent the day eating pizza, and watching movies as it rained all day. Today, im here bout to go get some grub and shop for x-mas cards and ramen noodles.
So Im doing a different work these days. Im working as Manager/Advisor of a small local NGO called Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi. I really am learning a lot and working a lot. We do alot of environmental education and we have 2 projects concerning wildlife conservation in a nearby wetland. We are working with the community to establish community wildlife managment program. We are also working with other NGO's to establish natural resource conservation as part of the school curriculum.
So x-mas is next week, and I care nothing for it, exept its a good time to travel somewhere with my friends. So bout 11 of us are going to Chizimulu Island, in the middle of Lake Malawi. I have been their before and know how totally awesom it is. Its a tropical paradise with amazing rare fishes and birdlife, beautiful rock formations for diving and white baobob tree's in the setting sun. We will spent 6 days there. Then I will go back to work until mid-January when my Peace Corps group will go to Nkhotakota for our Close of Service trip. We only have 4 months left here.
So I never put details bout me and Lind's adventures, so I want to recap what I can remember:
So Linds arrived Sept 17, 2008 and left November 3, 2008
- The first place we went was to this cool tikki bar and outdoor resturant with gardens. We busted out the travel scrabble and got some beers, greens. Linds kicked my ass.
- We stayed at a touristy lodge that night, to ease lindsey into africa
- Next day we hitched up to my village in Kasungu. Linds loved hitching and seeing the country side of Africa for the first time. And she got to experience a matola ride at its best...20 people crammed in the back of a broken-ass truck. For some reason I always end up with genitals very close to my face. ewwwwww
- We spent 2 nights at my house, Linds got to use a bucket to bath, dig a hole in the yard to shit at night, start her first cooking fire, and operate a parrafin lantern...we also drank loads of my home-made mulberry wine...sooo good.
- Then we headed for Nkata Bay, only bout 4-5 hours away, but through public transportation, it took us 12 horrible bitchy hours, by the end of the day, we were barely speaking.
- But when we arrived at Wiz's beach and met up withe the 30 other PCV's there, we started having a good time, until we went to a dance party with some theivin Rasta's who stole our wind-up flashlight. It had a bad ending, Ill leave it at that.
- Next day, was just an awesom beach-loafing day, cookin up fresh fishes from da sea and swimmin
- Next day, we headed bout 1 hour north to Nkaty Bay, where we boarded the Illala boat, which delivered us in 4 hours, to Chizimulu Island. We spent one week there, being soo lazy. We cooked some of our own food to save money and played a lot of scrabble, we did a little skinny-dippin too.
- Then we went to the major city of Mzuzu, which is actually very small with mostly dirt roads. But the market is pretty good, we shoped around for tananian clothes and had a tailor make us some national wear. We tented at a church, drinking vodka undercover.
- Then we started hitchin north were we spent some hours walking down a hot, dusty, remote road. One of the best moments of the trip! Until we were finally picked up and droped at the bottom of Livingstonia Pleateau. We ended up getting a matola up this 20 bend dirt road to The Mushroom Farm, where we spend the next 5 days camping on the edge of the mountain, in a forest with a veiw of the lake far down below. We cooked all of our own food on a 3-stone fire on the edge and hiked, so many kilometers, up hill. We went to a waterfall, and had a cool adventure getting there.
- Then we hiked down the plateau and went straight to the nearest beach we could find and we found such an amazing place. The beach was huge spreading lumps of beautiful sand and some reeds with a back drop of a plataue that comes right up to the beach. We got some new Elephant beers and sat in this natural little river that was being formed by the tide.
- We left the next morning and went back down to Mzuzu, then south to the Viphya Platuae, where we found an exstensive tall pine plantation and a cute, cheap and very clean guesthouse. The temperature in this forest is very cold and fog and drizzle are almost constant. We did a little bit of hiking, but mostlyl just recooped from all the hiking in Livingstonlia.
- Next we went back to my village and I showed Linds my projects and work. She attended some of my meetings and I took her into the National Park I live next to.
- Then we headed, via hitching, to the south to Liwonde National Park. We were suppose to participate in a game count, but we failed, we just camped and cooked and hung with our monkey friend who was only after our things.
- Then George and Rob picked us up in their rental car and we headed to Cape Maclear. The scenery is soo beautiful here with island close off-shore and forested mountains all around. We hired a small ricketedy wooden boat and pattled ourselves along with a crate of beer to a near by island. We cooked fish and snorkeled, then rowed back. That night we checked out the night life and sat for 3 hours looking at cload shapes in the moonlight.
- Then we headed back to Lilongwe and I found a house to live in and we went back to the village for a week and then to lilongwe to finish up the trip. We had a little diner party and watched movies, then Linds left.
Such an awesom trip...
photo's are comeing soon..Happy Holidays and I hope that 2009 brings everyone good things and we all do a little more for the environment and wildlife.
Jamie
