Adapting to the British ways.

So it’s been a week that I have been back in the UK after my 6 month stint in Malawi. I am slowly beginning to adapt to the British life once more – there is a lot of rain, a lot of moaning and a lot of excitement about a certain sporting event coming up soon!

Well I can’t say the journey back was uneventful… I opened up my suitcase once I got home to find all my SD cards had been stolen, meaning that I lost 3,000 photos. Still quite gutted about that, but at least I made it home safely, eh? Since being back I have had the same few questions asked over and over again: What was the best bit? Would you go back to Malawi? Would you become a teacher after your experience? Was it easy living the Malawian lifestyle? What do you miss most about Malawi?

What was the best bit?... Well this question is very difficult to answer; picking my best bit out of the past 6 months is very hard. Obviously I really loved my holiday to Zanzibar but I think my best bits are in Malawi. Arriving at Nkhata Bay in the first week on the top of a rice lorry is still up there in my memories! It was just a perfect way to arrive, so very Malawian and something I will remember for the rest of my life. Obviously there are so many other amazing moments that I can’t begin to list down.

Would I go back to Malawi? Yes. I will almost certainly go back to Malawi at some point in my life. Probably not in the next few years as very little will have changed but I would love to go back in a decade or two and go to my little village, see the pupils and see what has happened to the area. I think this could be quite difficult to take as I feel that very little will have changed – almost like stepping back to 2012.

Would I become a teacher? No. But I was never going to become a teacher; this was just a bit of fun. After teacher over there for 5 months I have a new respect for teachers across the world. It is a very hard and demanding job and unfortunately one that is not for me – I don’t think!

Was it easy living Malawian? At the start it was quite tricky, as I am sure Anthony will be able to back-up! But after a few months it became so simple. Living without electricity I really easy to adapt to and I didn’t miss the TV or a shower at all once adapted. The food was lovely, so amazing that I actually put on a stone in the time I was in Africa! And the people are just the best in the world to my mind.

What I miss most about Malawi? Well there is just so much to miss about the country. I think I miss the Lake quite a lot as swimming in it was a real pleasure. Being able to go down to the Lake every day and being able to swim in warm waters was a luxury (the English Channel or the Solent don’t quite match up!). Also the weather is something I will miss quite a lot… it was just so perfect all the time, being able to spend so much time outside instead of cooped up indoors all the time. And of course I will miss the friendliness of the place. When you walked down the street you would get everyone talking to you, wishing you a good day or smiling. When walking around the streets here all you see is misery on people’s faces – such a stark contrast.

One thing I have been thinking about a lot recently is just how happy the Malawians are. They live in poverty, with so little they should be happy about and yet they are always laughing, joking and having a good time. Then I look to the UK, we have everything in comparison and yet we are always moaning about the weather or the gasman being 10 minutes late. It really makes me think which culture is winning? Isn’t it better to be happy and poor than sad and rich? If there is one thing I will take from my experience in Malawi is to make the most of my life, try not to moan about the insignificant things and enjoy life.

Thank you for following my blog over the past 7 months. If there are any questions at all then please comment or email at d-a-v-i-d@hotmail.co.uk.

Over and out from Malawi 2012. 

Goodbye...

So my time in Malawi is almost over, just enough time for one more blog. I fly home tomorrow afternoon after 6 months in this country. I have to admit I am very excited to go home but I really will miss Malawi a lot.

Over the past week I have continued to volunteer at Butterfly in Nkhata Bay, I chose to stay there for an extra week instead of going to the 4th July celebrations at Maji Zuwa. I loved my time at Nkhata Bay as I got to know the kids at nursery really well by thje wend of the 2 weeks. I picked out my favourite, a little girl called Natasha who is just the cutest girl in the world. I have managed to fit her inside my suitcase and hope to get her through customs in Heathrow... so if you see me with a small African child then you know who it is. There were a few unfortunate events at the nursery including one little boy who weed on me - luckily there was a spare shirt for me to change into - I later learned to keep my distance from that chap.

In the afternoons at Butterfly I would either relax in the lake or help Alice (the owner) move a load of sand and bricks for a new nursery they are building. Moving the bricks was fun as we got to chuck them to each other in a long line - I managed to improve my rugby skills somewhat and now I male a good scrum-half.

Before long my time in Nkhata Bay was over and I had to head back up to Maji Zuwa to collect all my things. We had a little party there on Saturday night which was tough as there were so many people to say goodbye to. I really don't like goodbyes! On the Sunday we were ready to go, after a final wave of hugs we got on the last minibus in Malawi and headed south!

I'm now in Lilongwe and again I find it such a strange place. The city is so wealthy with expensive restaurants and electronic advertising boards - it's incredible to think that this is the same Malawi that I have spent so long in without electricity or running water. I can't say I am a big fan of Lilongwe, however they do have an amazing Indian place where I will have to eat tonight!

Tomorrow I am leaving Malawi around 1pm and heading off to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) where I will wait for 6 hours until my flight to Heathrow. I'm really not looking forward to it and just want to be home right now. I still can't believe that in 48 hours I will be in my home once more after 6 months here - CRAZY!

Anyway, I will blog once more when I get back to the UK. But for now... goodbye Africa.

Big Kids...

So this is just a quick update on what I`m doing this week. Unfortunately I am typig this on a Belgian keyboard where the letters are in the wrong place so if you see many misspellings then it`s due to the keyboard – not me.

As I said before I am now at Nkhata Bay staying in a place called Butterfly which is a mix of a tourist camp and a volunteering place. I arrived expecting that I would be the only volunteer, however I am one of 8 volunteers working here, 1 Scot, 1 Irish, 1 Northern Irish, 1 German and 4 English... so it`s a nice mix of people. For the first two days I have been working at a local nursery that was set up by Butterfly for kids aged between 2 to 6 (an age group I have never worked with before!). The kids are, in a word, crazy... I spend half of my time there with 6 of them crawling all over my trying to get me to pick them up. But they are also the most adorable kids aswell with the cutest smiles and I can see why Madonna adopted Malawian children!!

At nursery we start at 8am with letters, this week we have be learning the letter A which is going okay but most of the kids are struggling with the tail of the small A. After an hour of learning we have Play Time which is chaos, little children running around everywhere making mud pies and eating them! After play time is porridge which I think is one of the most important things for them as all of them get one decent meal a day. The porridge is maize porridge and is just basically maize and water, they even give me a bowl and I have to say that it isn`t the greatest thing in the world, generally I find the thinest child and fill their bowl up more. But I think it is great that they get the porridge and they all love it, fighting over the scraps left in the bowls. Then we have `Nap Time` which is a favourite for me, jokes... it`s such a big waste of time as the kids never get settled enough to sleep, they just end up rolling around on top of each other for 45 minutes and playing with my leg hair (they are amazed by my leg hair as Africans don`t really have any so they think I`m a bear or something!) I have found something that keeps me entertained during it though, pick up the naughty kids and spin them around... they love it and watching them dizzly bumping into things is hilarious! Then we have another hour of learning, doing numbers or colours... some understand but many of the boys have the attention span of a goldfish and hold up something green and proudly announce that it`s orange.

The nursery is very challenging for me as I`m not used to the age group and they have so much bloody energy!! So I have spent the afternoons hanging out in the lake and mastering the canoe with the other volunteers. Today I am doing something a bit different with a visit to a disabled childs house. The German girl and myself are going to assess how he is progressing and do a few lessons with him which should be good hopefully. At the weekend we are all going to another school set up by Butterfly with our paint brushes to give it a make-over.

All in all I am loving this week at Nkhata Bay, plently of interesting stuff to do with some really nice people to work along side. Not quite sure what I am going to do next week, been invited to stay here, go to Nhkotakota with some Lattitude volunteers or go back up to Maji Zuwa... who knows!?

Bye Bye Fulirwa!

I’m sorry that I haven’t been keeping in touch with you recently but the problem is that I don’t have a laptop I can write my blogs up on anymore as Anthony got his bag stolen in Mzuzu which contained the precious laptop! Fortunately Anthony is okay and he can claim most of it back on the insurance so that’s all good.

Well last time I updated the blog I was talking about 2 weeks off due to the Form 2 exams, but I didn’t know what to do… well… I decided that I would help out some American volunteers staying at Maji Zuwa who are building a new school block at Khwawa CDSS (where Chloe and Liz teach). I was accepted by Matt, saying they need all the help they could get so during the first week of the holiday I went down to the school and helped build. Now, I have no knowledge about building at all and I have never laid a single brick before that week but now I am proud to say I still know very little!! The other volunteers are all Engineering students and so they had to explain everything to me like I was an idiot! I learned how to mix sand and cement without a cement mixer and how to lay bricks and fill. By the end of the week we had done half of the 4 foot foundations which I was quite pleased with. The work itself was quite easy, the difficult part was standing outside in the sun for 9 hours at a time – my scalp got quite burned after I forgot to suncream it up!! After the week I decided that my building days were behind me and I should retire from construction forever and I got invited on a holiday with Chloe and Liz.

The girls were going to take to ferry to Ruarwe which is a really remote resort that is a 6 hour hike away from the closest civilisation. Perfect! I tagged along with them and we arrived in Ruarwe on the Monday morning. The resort doesn’t have any electricity or running water, just a heap of books, board games and a view to die for. I was still a bit miffed as it meant that I couldn’t see the England game and there was no phone coverage to receive updates! After 3 games of Monopoly, 4 Scrabble games, numerous games of Bridge, 2 books and 2 days we decided there wasn’t that much left to do so we managed to get on the mid-week boat to Nkhata Bay. I wasn’t feeling very great after my pancakes that morning and was very sick on the journey (I’ve never had sea-sickness but I know lake-sickness isn’t very pleasant!). Other than throwing up, everything else was going well as we were cruising towards Nkhata Bay, until the captain decided to dock for “a 15 minute break”. After 2 hours of not seeing anyone we got suspicious and decided to go and look for people, only to find they were all chatting and had decided to go back to Ruarwe today!! We were stuck in a very small village with no room to stay, water or food. Luckily there was a conference going on and we managed to hitch a lift in a rich mans car all the way to Mzuzu – phewww!

Nkhata Bay was great as usual, we stayed a place called Butterfly this time which is a tourist place but also does a lot for the community, its set up a local radio station for the kids, a music area and much more. The owners are incredibly friendly and we met another Englishman who we watched the England v Sweden game with. There were only 4 English people in the large African bar but we made up for it with noise as England took us on another rollcoaster ride of emotions!

Also during the 2 weeks off I went and visited the Bwengu girls for a couple of nights. On the Monday I went to their school and sat in some of their classes which was very interesting to compare with my school. I was shown in the Form 3 Maths class and Sarah mentioned that I taught maths at Fulirwa, at this point the teacher said “Oh excellent, you can teach this class for me then,” – or words similar. With that I was thrown into an alien maths class with just a book and a piece of chalk for 40 minutes. I was so proud of the way I dealt with it and I realise that I would never have been able to do that at the start of the trip. But now I really enjoyed it, testing the kids knowledge and being able to manage a class of 40! After school finished the girls took me to one of their local shops (an average Malawian shops that sells the basics) and we took over for the afternoon, greeting and serving the customers. Okay, there was a communication issue and we had to be helped by the owner almost every time but it was great fun and I realised how much I miss serving people. The business is quite incredible, they never look busy and there are so many competitors around the area but he reckons he would take K15,000 to K30,000 a day (40 – 75 quid!) which is an amazingly large amount in Malawi. Obvious this is only his revenue and I am sure his profits are just a tiny percentage of that figure. In the two hours we were there 14 people came in and asked for a Coke (which was unfortunate as we were out of Coke and most didn’t like the alternatives.)

So the 2 weeks ended and we went back to school, if only for a week. The week was full of exams for our Form 1’s and 3’s which is actually quite a nervous time for me as I get to see whether my teaching has helped them. The results weren't too bad in the end but I would have hoped for better with my Form 3 Maths after we did so much extra study. On Friday we were given an amazing send off from the school with a nice party, speeches and Coca-Cola of course!!

Now I have just 2 weeks left in Malawi but I don’t have anymore work to do at the school. I was going to work on the school building again with the American volunteers but I have decided to go back to Butterfly in Nkhata Bay and volunteer there. I am now volunteering there in a nursery school with kids aged between 2 and 6 which is quite challenging but also so much fun. I am also going to help out with football training and a video editing suite that they have there. I really want to do as many different things here before I leave and I hope that the week there will be beneficial! Also it means that I can watch all the remaining football games on the massive screen they have at the Bay – good thinking eh? I am only going to stay there a week as I want to be back at Maji Zuwa for the 4^th July as there is going to be a huge party for American Independence Day with about 50 Peace Corps volunteers invited. I think it will be quite funny to be there with Chloe and Liz (proud Brits)!

Visitors to Fulirwa!

I honestly can’t remember what I updated you on last time so I am sorry if I repeat myself here! Malawi has turned me into the most forgetful person ever!!

This week has been an interesting one with our first visitor on Wednesday. Alison, who is an American volunteer at Maji Zuwa, came to give a talk to our Form 1 girls about women’s empowerment. The girls are very shy in class and lag behind the boys in most subjects so Alison came to talk to them specifically. The results she got were amazing; they completely opened up to her and told her some pretty personal information. They said that they thought the boys always talked too much and believed that boys were planning on how to get them pregnant – which is quite a scary opinion held by 14 year old girls. Alison also interviewed Anthony and me about the state of female education in Malawi which she will use for her dissertation back in the US. It was great to have a visitor finally, the kids went mad for her and the school was in a constant state of excitement for the whole day (particularly the boys!!). We showed her round the area, not that there is much to see, and she seemed amazed how rural the place was describing it as “literally in the middle of nowhere”. I showed off my culinary skills by making soya curry with Bombay potatoes and then a chocolate cake for dessert! All the teachers seemed to be amazed by her as well as the students even though they had a female Peace Corps volunteer recently.

We have just found out that in a weeks time we will be off school once more… this time due to exams. Fulirwa has a big problem, once the government exams start there isn’t allowed to be any teaching within a 100 metre radius – all our school buildings are within 100m. The headteacher has tracked down one church that can be used as a classroom for the two weeks but obviously the Form 4’s, who have important exams, are given priority! Neither of us teach form 4 and so we won’t have any classes for the duration of the exams. At the moment I really don’t know what I am going to do during that time, Anthony is planning to learn to scuba-dive but that is quite expensive (and I have my eyes on an Oxford United season ticket when I get back home). I may try and volunteer at one of Matt’s many projects or go to another placement and see if I can teach there. Whatever I do the holiday means that we only have 2 full weeks of teaching left – just 34 lessons that is!! When we come back from the holiday we will just have 1 week to prepare our classes before their end of term exams, which I am dreading already. My maths class is so far behind it’s untrue, whatever I do just seems to take twice as long as it should do.

A quick thank you to Miss McGuiness’ year 9 class at Ryde Academy who replied to the email my Form 3’s sent. The students have been busy typing up a reply about the local area, what animals you can find and their local culture. Even just getting one email from England has made them very excited and a lot want the students addresses now!! The typing is still painfully slow and I feel that this is the only computer that they will ever use which is pretty incredible if you think about it. I have also been teaching the headteacher how to use his computer, showing him the basics of Word and Excel. He can now type up an exam on his computer with very good formatting and he is much quicker than the students at typing! Last weekend I bought the Head an Airtel Dongle so he can connect to the internet – something that he has always been trying to do. I sat patiently with his computer for 2 hours trying to connect to the internet but as ever Airtel is terrible (Airtel is something I definitely won’t miss when I leave Malawi). We still haven’t managed to connect him to the internet and I am not sure whether it is due to back coverage or a fault at Airtel’s side. I just really hope to get him online soon as he wants to use the internet for research as he hopes to go to the University of Livingstonia next year.

Whilst I was helping the headteacher with his computer I noticed there were a load of kids in his house all working hard. After inspection I found around 30 children shelling maize – such incredible amounts of maize! The Head owns some farm land and has just harvested his maize, he hopes to get 50 bags of 50kg worth of maize. He will apparently keep 30 of them for his family which will last the whole year and sell the remaining 20 bags for around K4,000 each (10GBP). He also grows rice on his fields but due to the lack of rain only 10% of his crops will be fully grown. The rice is much more profitable, selling at K6,000 for 20 litres and therefore he converted more of his fields to rice which has lost him a lot of money this year around – lets hope for a lot of rain next year! He is using a whole house to shell the maize with kids sitting in on floor in a bundle of the stuff. I went in with my camera and caused chaos as the children run here and there trying to get in shot. The headteacher is paying them K30 for each 20 litres they shell.

Also there has been more news with the Malawian Kwacha. The government have printed brand new notes that are completely different and everyone in the country has just 3 weeks to change all their notes to the new system. I have just seen the notes and they are so amazing – about 3 times small than previously and now they have different people on each note. They remind me a lot of Monopoly money and also look a lot like Zambian Kwacha. With the news of the recent devaluation most things in Malawi have gone up in price… a minibus from here to Mzuzu now costs K1,600 instead of K1,300 but it’s still much cheaper for me as I was paying over 5 quid for the minibus where now I just pay 4GBP!

The usual Malawi...

So again I am in Mzuzu with a little update... only 7 weeks left in the country!!

Over one weekend we decided to climb up to Rakesh and Claus’s house which is on top of Livingstonia and meant a 4 hour hike up the mountain. The trek was good fun and there was some great rock climbing parts once you got off the road and onto the shortcuts. But hiking for 4 hours in 30 degree heats is tricky and I don’t think I have ever sweated that much in my life – I drunk 1.5 litres of water and yet I was still dehydrated once I got to the top. Luckily Rakesh and Claus have a shower which was very welcomed and we spent the night at their house with 9 other volunteers crashing on their floor to save money! The next day they took us to see the Manchewe Waterfalls which were very impressive and we got to go to a cave that the falls went over! Unfortunately Anthony and myself had to go back down the mountain, little over 24 hours since we came up but this time we got a lift for about half way down!

Also on 1^st of May we had a day off to celebrate Labour Day which was great timing as it coincided with the big match Man City v Man Utd! So we popped down to Hara with a couple of others to a small bar to watch the game. The “room” was a small shack, covered by a grass roof and was only about 15 by 10 foot! To say it was packed is an understatement as there were men everywhere, all sitting on wooden stalls to get a view of the 2 small portable TVs at the front of the room. There must have been 200-400 people in there and to my surprise about 75% of them were supporting City! The atmosphere was perhaps the best you will ever get for watching a match on TV and the crowd had a strange love towards Gael Clichy who they cheered everytime he was on the ball! If ever there was an example of globalisation then this was it as you had hundreds of Malawians passionately supporting two football clubs from Manchester as if it was normal! When City scored the reaction was intense and, although I enjoyed the game, I was pleased when it was over as I could get some fresh/cool air for once.

Also Matt’s lodge, Maji Zuwa, has just got satellite TV in the hope to attract more customers which is excellent for us as we now get to watch more football and western TV. Last weekend I watched the F.A. Cup final with many locals all cheering for Chelsea as they have more black players! Also Chloe, Elizabeth and I had an evening of British programmes with Who Wants to be a Millionaire, followed by Total Wipeout, QI, Come Dine With Me, Ramesy’s Kitchen Nightmare and Live at the Apollo. I did feel guilty that I wasn’t embracing the Malawian culture but it was the best couple of hours of TV watching ever – instead of watching terrible Nigerian soap opera’s (the acting in those makes even Hollyoaks looks spectacular). The satellite TV meant that I could watch the final weekend of the Premier League, which was pretty incredible as I am sure you are aware… when that final City goal went in it was pretty funny scenes around Maji Zuwa. Also I can’t wait for Euro 2012 and I am already preparing to make England flags to give to the students (Anthony has green, white and orange face paints and he is sure that he will convert more Malawian’s to the Irish!)

At school we had our first really intense staff meeting that lasted just shy of 2 hours. All 7 of us were called to gather during school (so no one was left to teach) and we were discuss the upcoming football tournaments. The next 2 Saturday’s bought football tournaments organised by the government and all schools were asked to participate up and down the country. The games were to be held in a neighbouring town of St Anne’s and it would cost the school K34,000 to transport the students back and forth for both weekends! However there was a problem… the school only had K13,000 in the bank so we were summoned to think of solutions. We were amazed that they still continue to try and take part! We suggested the idea that their education was more important than sport and the fact that we couldn’t even afford to buy chalk meant that an expensive football game wasn’t that best idea. This was well received but I think if we weren’t there they would have found a way to borrow money and put the school into more financial difficulty. So in the end we saved the school a tonne of money, the students we disappointed that the games we called-off but I think they understood! And now we can even afford chalk again, which is excellent as trying to teach without chalk is a nightmare!!

A few weeks back I managed to buy a radio from Karonga that meant that I could listen to the BBC World Service which is so amazing! Everyday I am listening in to what is happening across the world and I don’t feel out-of-touch anymore. On Monday we listened and the opening story was about Malawi – President Banda had devalued the kwacha by about 50% so it’s now K250 to the $1. This is excellent news for me as the kwacha had been at such a poor rate and I was spending far more than I expected. But now it’s K400 to the pound instead of K250, which means I save a bundle of money! The price of a coke goes down from 24p to 16p, but more importantly a nights accommodation somewhere goes down from 5 quid to 3 quid which will save me so much in the next 2 months. The news should also be good for the country as a whole, it is now going to be cheaper to export goods so hopefully the countries exports will grow and help out the trade balance. Obviously it’s going to be more expensive to import but hopefully this won’t make too much difference as fuel is already on black market rates and so a rise at the pumps won’t push the price up too much. All in all the change should be good for Malawi, the new President has bought more optimism into the country and hopefully her gamble will pay off.

Now we have so little time left at the placement and with lots of Public Holidays we have realised we have just 2 full teaching weeks left. I will definitely miss Fulirwa, the kids and the teachers as they have all become so normal in my life. I love teaching now, particularly Business Form 3 at the moment as we are doing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs which I love and then going onto creating CV’s and job interviews which are all going to be great fun. Day by day I am getting more used to the way of life and experimenting more… just the other day I made a soya curry with Bombay potatoes which was a lovely change from the normal rice and soya that we have every day!

Anyway, I had best be off!

Carisbrooke Castle in Malawi!

After a long Easter holiday I am now back doing the day job in Fulirwa. The first few days were hard as I had to go back living the basic lifestyle, without electricity and running water, but now I am enjoying life once more. Time is going very quickly and I now have just over 2 months left of the placement… and less time actually teaching!

We came back to quite a shock, one of our teachers had been transferred to another local school – something the headteacher wasn’t too happy about. This meant that we had just 5 other teachers apart from Anthony and myself. 7 teachers to do 180 periods in a week is pretty tough and the headteacher has had to take on 27 periods along with headteacher duties, so things are pretty hectic around here. Having said that, I have actually lost some of my periods as I had to give up English Literature Form 1 to another teacher who has to be assessed in it. So now I am down to 17 subjects a week which is fairly low, but this has given me more time to do extra lessons with my Form 3’s to help their maths and business, which are horrifically bad! They are 18 years old and can’t answer “I think of a number, add 5 to it and multiply it by 3. The number I end up with is 39. What number did I start with?” (The answer is 8, for those who can’t do that!!) So I have been working on their basic maths skills, teaching them Form 1 maths in spare periods and after school, hoping that will help them. So far I have actually seen a vast improvement in there maths – now they can do difficult quadratic equations with ease – though whether they will be able to do it come their exams is another matter!

I am starting to enjoy teaching English Form 1’s now, before it was my worst subject as I had been going through the study book and they really couldn’t do the work. It was such a pain to me that I bought a teacher’s guide book for English in Lilongwe and to my amazement there was an extract describing Carisbrooke Castle! They wanted the Malawian students to do an exercise where they had to write a leaflet for tourists going to Carisbrooke Castle explaining what they could see, including “Working donkeys”!! The idea of 15 year old Malawian students learning about the Castle’s construction – like I did when I was their age is quite strange and remarkable! I will have to do that topic with them soon but for now I am doing a topic about weather where they are writing weather forecasts and I will film them present the weather on Monday… should be interesting as I have promised a prize to the best one.

Business Enterprise is going well, last week I taught them how to do a cashflow forecast, which they seemed to enjoy and made a cashflow for their imaginary business. This week was SWOT analysis and a balance sheet, so they are gaining important business knowledge little by little which will hopefully help them in the future. After a request from some of my students I have started teaching them how to use the school’s laptop, which is extremely interesting for both them and me as the differences between cultures is incredible. We started off by using Word and they, “Ooo”ed and “Ahh”ed as letters appeared on the screen as I typed. They also find it completely hilarious every time a new line is automatically started instead of going off the end of the screen… and when I showed them they could make the font bigger they were utterly amazed. After some getting used to I got them all to do some typing as we wrote an email to students at Ryde High School in the hope they will reply. The email was about ½ a page long and took 1 ½ hours to type (even slower than my dad which I didn’t think were possible!) but I was very proud of their efforts and I hope someone from the school will reply as it will really get them excited (HINT-HINT TO ANYONE AT RYDE WHO IS READING THIS!) As well as the great excitements of the computer I have just found a DVD of Planet Earth in our school library, which a former volunteer must have left, and now I am showing them one episode per week which they love. They haven’t seen the world before, anything outside the village is alien to them and to see polar bears, penguins and other exotic animals is great for them. Unfortunately I am going to run out of David Attenborough classics before I leave but I am going to search the markets for something similar!

Since coming back from Easter I seem to have acquired a boyfriend! Francis, a student in Form 1, rushed after me after class one day and handed me a note saying, “Mr Davide Lewis, I want a relationship with you as a friendship. Good Luck, Francis.” To which I said “Aww thanks, I will put this up on my wall”. Obviously this wasn’t the answer he was looking for as the next day he nervously came up to me again… he was a bit like a love-sick 13 year old and asked, “Have you…. thought about… umm… ummm… the relationship?” So I said that we could be friends and shook his hand politely. Then the very next day he turned up at our house at 6:15am with a bag full of 12 eggs, which is so amazingly generous – eggs are very valuable around here and 12 is a lot of eggs. Since then he has been asking to come to the house and talk to me, I am trying to subtly keep my distance but I don’t think its working. It’s a shame because he is a great kid just I think he is slightly confused at the moment!!

Anthony received a thermometer in the post from his mum so now for the first time we can actually see how hot it is which is quite interesting. I first saw it in our house at about 7pm and it read 28^O which explains why I get so hot at nights. The hottest I have seen it so far is 33 ^O but bearing in mind we are starting the dry season now and it’s getting much cooler I think it must have been in the high 30’s at the start of the year! Most mornings I wake up freezing, shivering as I get out of bed – the other morning in particular so I took the thermometer outside, and I was right a freezing temperature of 18^O! As I said, the dry season is starting – we are still getting the occasional downpours but nothing like we were getting in March. It’s going to be quite an interesting change in the landscape of Malawi as already things seem less green.

Last weekend was the former President’s funeral and so Monday was a Public Holiday. Since President Joyce Banda has taken office there has been an incredible sugar crisis, I thought the queues of 100’s of cars to get petrol was insane but seeing 100’s of people queuing for sugar is truly incredible. There is genuine excitement, though, of what Banda can achieve, she needs to reinstate trusted democracy back to Malawi as well as sort out the failing economy. The papers are already saying she will devalue to kwacha, lets hope its not just speculation this time! There was quite a lot of interest around for the funeral and everyone had their radios on to listen to the service… unfortunately I didn’t get chance to listen or watch as I was travelling back from Nkhata Bay where we spent the weekend. Whilst at Nkhata Bay there was an interesting party where I met a guy that is going to Oxford Brookes next year to study Politics and Economics (I am studying Politics, Economics and International Relations there) pretty small world, eh?

This weekend we are going up to Livingstonia, made famous by Dr. David Livingstone who started a settlement in the mountains to avoid malaria carrying mosquitoes. The trip requires a 3 hour hike up a dirt track to get to the top where we will stay with Rakesh and Claus who live up the mountain. I’m quite excited about the weekend, don’t know why exactly but should be good and then of course we have another day off on Tuesday for “Labour Day”! So for now, as I want to keep this blog post nice and short, I will finish but I will update you again soon…

Easter Travels...

Well where to start with the past three weeks? I have been to one of the wonders of the world, one of the top 10 beaches in the world, seen many, went to a wildlife reserve that was so very impressive! I will try and keep my description limited on everything otherwise this blog post will be massive. So let’s go back in time to Friday 23^rd March where my exciting adventure all begun…

After correcting all of my exams and realising that pretty much all of my class failed (still upset about that!) we made our way down to Lilongwe where we would catch a bus to Zambia on Sunday. . It was strange to be back in Lilongwe, when we arrived (in January) I commented on how empty and quiet the city but after living in the middle of nowhere for 3 months Lilongwe seemed amazing… so big and so westernised! On the Sunday we left our camp at 6am ready for a full day of travel to Zambia – 15 of us in a minibus on a proper road-trip. Once across the boarder we came across the first difference… the transport situation. We tried to get all 15 of us in 2 cars (this would be thought of as comfortable travel in Malawi) but they refused and only allowed 4 in each car – also seatbelts had to be worn, all things that we weren’t used to after Malawi! Sunday was a full day of travel, leaving at 6 in the morning and not arriving at our hostel in Lusaka until 9pm. Riding into Lusaka was quite incredible, it honestly felt we were back in the UK with motorways, filled roads, traffic jams, (EVEN A WOOLWORTHS!!) but unfortunately we couldn’t explore the city as we had to be on the road again at 9am in the morning. This is where our 2^nd big dfference came… we rocked up at 8:57 for a 9am bus to Livingstone and we were told we were late!! Being 3 minutes early in Malawi is unheard of so this was a massive surprise. We were told that we needed a ticket to get on the bus (again something that we have not experienced before) and the bus itself was pure luxury… we got heaps of space, air conditioning, TVs and even food and drink bought around – you wouldn’t even get this on long-haul buses in the UK let-alone Malawi! Needless to say that the 8 hour bus journey went really quickly and we had soon arrived in Livingstone, the home town of Victoria Falls!

Whilst in Livingstone we found a couple of great restaurants, the first served crocodile which I had to try as my gran had always talked about eating crocodile! It was possibly the nicest meal I have had this year, so tasty and tender… more crocodile should be bought over to the UK however I do see some logistical problems with this suggestion! The crocodile was washed down with a few Zambian beers that are actually quite excellent, except I can’t remember what they were called but I went through quite a few in the week I was there! On the first full day in Livingstone we made the 10 minute bus ride to the Victoria Falls. I don’t know quite what I was expecting but I certainly wasn’t expecting what we got. After hiring a silly coat to protect us from the spray we walked down to the edge and looked in amazement! The sheer scale of the waterfall is amazing and the spray is mind-blowing! I have never been hit with so much water at one time and warm water too. We spent a good couple of hours walking around the place seeing the falls from different angles, sometimes it vanished from site as the spray made visibility so bad. Then we walked round and saw the famous Victoria Falls Bridge that connects Zambia to Zimbabwe, and from the middle of it we could just make out a little dot freefalling from the bridge and then bouncing right up into the sky – bungee jumping! After a bit more exploring we made our way out and it was quite obvious that the coat I hired hat worked as I was soaked from head to toe. Also, more worryingly, so was my camera and when I came to turn it on nothing happened. I took the news quite well I think and quickly sat down somewhere dry and in the sun and left it to dry for a bit. Then, following instructions, I went back to our hostel and put the camera in a pan full of rice – desperately hoping it would spring back to life. It didn’t.

Whilst we were in Livingstone it was Sarah’s 18^th birthday and as you only turn 18 once we made plans to make it quite a special one for her. On the eve of her birthday we went on a “Sunset Booze Cruise” along the river Zambezi basically it was a 3 hour cruise that had unlimited free alcohol and so we advantage of this and by the end none of us were what you’d call ‘sober’. Still we managed to see some elephants, hippos, crocodiles as well as a gorgeous sunset that evening. On the boat we met a big group of travellers who were in an organised tour from Cape Town to Turkey, we got talking to them including an Irishman called Gavin, 6 foot 10 guy from Norwich called George, a very talkative lady from Watford and a couple of German students. We got chatting to them and decided to hit the town with a few of them after we got back. Come midnight Gavin and Anthony organised the live band to play Sarah a song that lasted 20 minutes while she awkwardly danced with some locals!!

As you can imagine, I wasn’t feeling quite my best the next morning… even the “Full English Hangover Cure” didn’t help! By late morning we were at the falls once again, however this time we made our way to the bridge as today was the jumping day. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do the bungee but was preparing myself to do the swing from the bridge, however once I stepped onto it I knew that there was no way I could force my body to jump off of the bridge – all 111m high! Before everyone jumped they had to be weighed and their weight was written in permanent pen on their forearm… interestingly I had gained 5 lbs since I left Britain in January (I was the only one who gained weight out of all of us!!) One by one everyone started to jump off and come back with incredible smiles but $120 is a lot of money to waste if I couldn’t manage to jump off. The others were incredible, all so brave but there was no way I could do it! Instead, I joined up with Ellie, who was also not going to do the jump, and we went on a zip-wire from the Zambian to the Zimbabwean side. The view was great but I couldn’t get the gutting feeling away as I couldn’t do the big jumps!

Around the site of the Victoria Falls there is a massive hotel complex that has Acers and Acers of green land. Roaming around at the front were around ten zebra and we were invited in to have a look at them. At some points I was standing just a few metres from the magnificent animals but unfortunately by this time I had no camera. We were always shown round the rest of the hotel area which was a strange mix of car parks, green space and giraffes… we watched an arriving taxi have to stop for a giraffe to get out of the road, very strange! At this point there were 9 of us wondering through the area, 8 of them with cameras constantly taking photos and then there was me – needless to say my mood wasn’t very good at this point and sulked back to the hostel afterwards. Once back at the hostel it went from bad to worse for me as I couldn’t find my money belt that contained my passport and everything important in it! 3 hours I searched for it and I was ready to leave to Lusaka that night to go to the British Embassy until Jess screamed my name and ran at me with the money belt in hand. If I am honest, I broke down at this point and for the first time in my life I cried with happiness. I decided that I was going to by everyone from the group a drink which lead to my best ever bar bill – 99,500 Zambia Kwacha (or 12 quid!!)

The next stage of our plan was to travel back to Lusaka and then onto South Luwanga National Park, which is close to the Malawian border. We stopped off in Lusaka for a night which was good as it meant we could finally explore the city that is known as the sister of LA. I couldn’t stand being camera-less anymore and found a nice little Sony Cybershot for 800,000 kwacha – bargain! The camera is doing an impossible job as it has to replace my DSLR – a similar scenario to when Sir Alex Ferguson retires I feel, but the photos from it are pretty decent. Also I went in a proper Woolworths, the Australians didn’t understand why I was quite so excited – unfortunately I didn’t manage to get a picture of the adventure. And then we were off again, this time on a 10 hour trip to South Luwanga, I really did not enjoy this trip as I was still a bit ill from the hangover a couple of nights before but we arrived in time for dinner and spotted a hippo 40 yards from where we ate!

We were only at the National Park for a day but made the most of it as we went on 2 safaris, a morning one at 6am which was so incredible and then an evening one which unfortunately we didn’t see many animals. After we had seen zebras and giraffes so close just a few days before I was interested in seeing them properly in the wild, what they do and where they hang out. It didn’t take long before we came across a family of elephants in the bush enjoying their breakfast. It is strange to call such a big animal ‘cute’ but these were definitely the cutest animals I had seen in a long time, with the two baby elephants playing a game with each other! Then came giraffe wondering around, over the dirt track which we had to slow down for. Also we spotted more zebras, hippos, impalas, buffalo and hyenas – all were incredibly beautiful and I felt so privileged to see such remarkable animals in the wild. As  said the night drive didn’t quite match this as all we saw were two hares and an owl!!

It was at this time that Sarah and Jess invited me to join them on their holiday to go on a train from Lusaka to Dar es Salaam and then pop over to Zanzibar for a few days. I had heard a lot about Zanzibar and how beautiful it was so I kindly accepted their offer. But this meant that we had to leave that night, without the others as we had to catch the train that left on Tuesdays. We left at 9pm in the pouring rain without anything booked at all, no travel, no accommodation and no travel guide to tell us what we were going to do… but it was so exciting and seemed quite ridiculous! We spent another night in Lusaka, again it was very nice and met some more friendly travellers.

Tuesday bought the start of our 1,860km train trip to Dar es Salaam! The train didn’t leave until 4pm so that gave us plenty of time to get to the station and even upgrade to 1^st class tickets. The only difference between 1^st class and 2^nd class is that you were sharing with 3 other people rather than 5 but I am glad we made the change. Male and females aren’t allowed to be in the same dorm on the train so I had a cabin with a very friendly Zambian student who was travelling to Dar to see his family. Also there was a lorry driver who spoke little English and a man that I never heard speak! I spent most of my time on the train lying on my bed reading, sleeping or generally drifting off into the distance! We met a nice (but slightly weird) Englishman onboard who was a University lecturer at Kings College Uni… he was good to chat to and was trying to convince me to change university courses. We were on the train until Thursday afternoon, but there was a fair amount of drama whilst travelling – on the Wednesday morning I went to see the girls in there cabin and left my wallet in my bag on my bed, when I came back all my money was missing. With the help of the friendly student we called the police to do searches of the people in my room but nothing was found. In the end I had to stop the train for 20 minutes to go to a police station and report the incident! Nothing like being the centre of attention, eh?

Arriving in Dar we still had accommodation booked, no map and no clue how to speak Swahili! We could only remember one name of a place to stay so asked a taxi driver to take us there. We were a bit surprised that after 15 minutes of driving he pulled up by a ferry terminal and gestured that we had to take the ferry to the other side. We were shunted in the queue and had to pay a grand sum of 200 shillings (15p) for the ticket. The ferry just worked from one side of the bay to the other and only took 3 minutes to get there. Just imagine the floating-bridge at Cowes and that is what this was like, only this was jammed full of tuk-tuk’s and people in bright saris! The energy of the place was amazing – just like coming out of a football match with the crowd bubbling with excitement. We got off the ferry and still had no idea of where to go and what to do but with a bit of help from a local girl who spoke very good English we arrived at the camp in a tuk-tuk in time for tea. Our rooms were little “banda’s” on the beach overlooking the Indian Ocean, quite breathtaking and for 15 quid – another bargain! Within 30 minutes of being there we spotted Gavin, George and their fellow travellers that we had met in Livingstone a week previously – small world isn’t it! That evening we chatted to them, I played pool against a Romanian traveller (and won) and chilled out overlooking the sea.

We spent one day in Dar es Salaam in which we roamed around the markets and went to an Indian restaurant which was possibly the poshest place I had ever eaten in! Again that night was spent relaxing with a few beers, this time talking to a Swiss girl who was volunteering as a teacher in Tanzania. . Come the morning we decided to hire bikes and ride through some villages on the outskirts of the city, it was all very pleasant expect the bike was miles to big for me and I kept on falling off!! Once the girls had stopped laughing at me we made our way to the ferry port to Zanzibar which was an incredibly unorganised place and to this day I still don’t know if we got on the right ferry… all I know is that after the two and a half hour journey we made it to the island. Again we didn’t have any plans on what we were going to do, nothing was booked and we didn’t even know where abouts on Zanzibar we had landed (it turned out to be Stone Town – the capital). Luckily there was a very good tourist information as soon as we got of the boat and they found us a cheap guesthouse to stay in. That evening we roamed around the markets of Stone Town which are supposed to be among the best in the world and they lived up to their reputation. The market went down a long, narrow twisty street that was paved with cobble stones and felt very Mediterranean. There were hundreds of sellers, all with stalls filled with clothes and accessories. We took a right turn into another maze of stalls – this time they had a distinctly different feel as most of the clothes were saris and traditional Indian clothes as 70% of Tanzania is Muslim. When the markets started closing we headed down to the sea just in time to see my first sunset over the Indian ocean, simply beautiful. When it became dark we stumbled across the main green which was eliminated brightly and filled with yet more stalls. These stalls were filled with seafood of all kinds and we were quickly shown through the vast array of what was on offer: crab, octopus and shark but to name a few! I couldn’t resist the shark when I saw it however I was slightly disappointed as it was just really fishy fish! With our stomachs full of exotic seafood and ice cream we headed back to the guesthouse, quickly changed and then went out to hit the bars and clubs. Unfortunately everything was a bit quiet and we were later told that there was a “Full moon party” up north which EVERYONE was at. But this didn’t stop us from having a good time and meeting some lovely people.

The next day we decided to head up to the north of the island, to Kendwa. But before we did we rented out bikes for the morning and cycled round Stone Town and to all the historical ruins and sites around the area. There really is so much to do in Stone Town that we agreed that we would spend one more day there at the end. In the afternoon we got a taxi to Kendwa, still without any accommodation booked whatsoever but the taxi driver was very kind and drove us from place to place until we got a room. We were quite lucky and found a room at “The Sunset Hotel” which wasn’t really a hotel, more like a village! Unfortunately we had to get a 2 bed room between the 3 of us but the girls agreed to share so it didn’t make a difference to me!! Anyway we arrived there just in time for another sunset… this time was quite incredible as we went down to the beach (which is in the top 10 beaches in the world!) and my God, it was beautiful. Miles upon miles of pure white sand leading into a gorgeous blue/turquoise sea and the orange sun slowly setting in the horizon – it was a scene from a Hollywood movie and I was there living it! We all took about 500 photos each of the sunset and then went to the bar to get some drinks in, and guess what? We met up with Gavin, George and the crew again!! We joined them for dinner at a cheap restaurant that they had found and while George tried to hit on Jess, I chatted to Gavin and the German students about their plans. We stayed up well into the morning talking/drinking/partying on the beach but I was let down by Jess and Sarah who went for an early night (probably trying to avoid 6 foot 10, George!!). By the time I got back to the room I had maybe a few too many and found Sarah and Jess in different beds meaning that I didn’t have a bed! Luckily Sarah woke and we had to share a bed, which was a story in itself as I literally kicked her out of the bed in the night (she has been showing me the bruise for the past 2 weeks!)

We spent a couple of days at Kendwa, they were mostly spent lying on the beach working on our tans and occasionally going for a swim to cool off! Whilst there we hired kayaks and sailed around a nearby island. Also I went parasailing; the view was great as I could see all across the island and way off into the west I could just make out the coast of Africa. We spent the evenings with an alcoholic beverage at hand and had a pretty good time to say the least! On our last full day on Zanzibar we went for a Spice Tour (as Zanzibar is world famous for producing amazing spices) in which we were shown around a local spice farm with a great guide showing us all the different types of spices and how they were grown. It was very interesting to see how our spice rack at home is actually made. The tour included lunch which was in a local house… all 18 of us on the tour sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle with a great selection of rice and sauces handed around. Finally we got a chance to buy some of the spices (which I took full advantage of!!) and bought a lot for our house back in Malawi.

Unfortunately, on the Thursday we had to leave Zanzibar! I had fallen in love with the island and I am quite certain that I will be back at some point in my life. We had yet another terribly unorganised ferry trip to deal with and once back in Dar had a few things to sort out (including a trip to the police station for my money). We then realised that we couldn’t get a bus back to Malawi until the following morning so had to spend the night in Dar es Salaam which again was quite eventful as I had my wallet pick-pocketed! Excellent!

The bus trip home was a long 15 hours to the border, luckily we made friends with a lovely Malawian student who helped us find a place to stay for the night and to get back across the border safely. Anthony had the key to our house and wasn’t back from his holiday yet so I was locked out, meaning that I just had to go to Matt’s lodge and have a swim and a relax before going back to Fulirwa the next day!! We are now back at school and teaching once more which is good, at first I was suffering post-holiday-blues but now I am enjoying life again, however there are only 80 days left until my flight back home!

Whilst we were on holiday there was some interesting news developing from Malawi… President Bingu had a heart attack and died meaning that his deputy was bought in – Joyce Banda, who is only Africa’s 2^nd woman President and Southern Africa’s 1^st. It feels pretty good to be in a country leading the way for the equality of women but at the moment not much has changed except there is now a sugar crisis as well as a fuel crisis! On Monday it is Bingu’s funeral which has been announced as a National Holiday so I am currently making plans of what to do on this day off.

As I said before, the holiday was such an incredible experience with some massive highs and some unfortunate depressing lows. The best thing about travelling is definitely the people you go with and the people you meet. I have made friends with some great travellers over the past 3 weeks and will never forget the random meetings of these people. For anyone looking to travel in Southern Africa you have to visit Victoria Falls and Zanzibar as they are both breathtakingly beautiful.

So for now I have to come to an end, I could have expanded this blog further but I think 4,000 words in enough for the moment!