News from Malawi…
…that little country next to that BIG lake in southeastern Africa, where Marty Giannini, who hosted our OpenSpaceTech practice workshop in Dublin (yes, Ireland) last year, is doing some work for Save the Children this year. You just don’t read news like this in Chicago in January:
Have finished sitting in meetings the first three days back from a 10-day Lake Malawi adventure over Christmas and New Years.There are people who think I really get around, but nobody I know gets around like Marty!Watching the coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you – smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, Come and find out. – from The Heart of Darkness
Lake Malawi is something too special to describe. Just some brief outtakes:
4 Toyota minibuses, packed, from Blantyre to Monkey Bay. A few hours wait and a spot in the back of a pickup takes us the final hour to Cape McClear where the lake awaits. Stepping out of our guest rooms we are on the same sand that is the beach itself.
Christmas dinner was nsima (corn porridge) and fish (kampango – unbelievable!), some beers and in the background, young men dancing, sweating, revelling. A young Hungarian woman that was with me at dinner could barely control herself amid the girating male bodies.
Hopped on the Illala Steamer for a two day trip North… imagine a bygone time… the only big ship on the water… and myself and friends stowed away like Huck on a grand adventure. With the bales of fish, bags of cement, too many people and their belongings, storms of bugs that migrate over the lake in billion strong “gusts” (they particularily took to the first class sleeping cabins and the lights of the first class upper deck bar… those of us regular people down in “economy” were never bothered… poetic justice?).
At one of the stops going North, Nkhota-khota, we cruised the market for needs and stopped at the Chibuku stand for a quick “one or two” (large containers of local millet / corn brew).
Landing at one of the beaches of Mozambique on the other side of the lake… taking in some new sounds and sights. My God! the shades of green at Cobue! Sleeping wherever we could find space… second night just a few broken hours resting head down on a table.
Nkhata Bay – swimming, diving, … some snorkelling… drinking… madness… too many foreigners with malaria… … insanity… more drinking… to town for Hot Spot and gorgeous dinners at $1 or 1.50 or the “Tree” and the lady serving rice & beans at $0.55!!!
A dance contest at the Sunshine Cafe… the drunken one just couldn’t complete those backward flips (and went home early with throbbing head).
Another boat (this one small and all the holidaying whites on the roof) North to heaven,… to Rurarwe… took 11 hours but oo was it worth it… intense sun and degenerating madness followed by the night sky, the Milky Way blazing, shooting stars shooting, and a 360 degree panaroma up top… where water was short… but beer was flowing… where some were passing out, others [not so lucky], where an egg fight erupted, and others were improving their Chewa or Timbuka with locals…
at Rurarwe, 20 metre dives off a rock in the lake… a 25 metre “jump” from a chalet at Chez Charlie… a natural slide down a river… a hard core extreme sporting experience… but more like an enlightening trip with mother nature… and dancing to national hero, Joseph Nkasa, a different step for each track, as 2003 passed away. a place that rests back a hundred years in the innocence of a fishing village with no roads but the lake and an ancient footpath extending hundreds of kilometres along the lakeshore. and dugout canoes…