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!

Back to the day job...

I am now over one-third of the way through my Malawian adventure, pretty incredible really as it honestly feels just like yesterday that I was saying goodbye to my friends in Wetherspoons and traveling to Heathrow. Having said that, if I look back at all the things I have done in the past two months and how much I have changed the way I live this is also hard to believe. For example, I am now completely used to teaching a 40 minute lesson, cooking on the coal burner, washing clothes by hand and used to going to bed at 9pm for a 6am start! There are things that I am starting to crave though, silly things like iced-buns, Gavin and Stacey and a shower. But there are definitely things that I will miss when I get home; I don’t know how I will live without a plate full of rice every evening and the endless amount of smiley children that are around everywhere. Maybe I should do a Madonna and start adopting random Malawian children?

I have realised that I haven’t actually told you much about my placement and what I do on an average day so I will tell you what an “average” day is in my life at the moment! Each morning I get awoken at 6am by my alarm, although I am normally awake as my body clock is getting used to the early starts! I quickly make myself breakfast which consists of a jam sandwich and remember to take my malaria tablet – all important stuff! At about 6:45 I make my way over to the staff room which is about 50 yards from our front door, and then I panic for the lessons I have during the day!! Everyday I have 4 lessons out of Maths Form 3, Commerce Form 1, Business Form 3, English Form 1 and Life Skills Form 3 and lessons last 40 minutes. In my Form 1 class there are 35 students whereas in my Form 3’s there are just 17 as most people move to a better school once they pass their JCE’s in Form 2! The school day ends at 1:20pm but I am normally finished by 12 noon. Lunch is normally either another jam sandwich or the leftovers from last nights meal! On Monday’s after school it is sport and I go to the local football field which is about 3km from us and join in with the football training until 4pm or so. On Tuesdays I have Scrabble Club and Thursday’s it is Business Enterprise (I will go on to describe them later on…). Also on Monday’s and Friday’s there is a school assembly at the end of the day, in which all the school is bundled in one classroom ready for the teachers to arrive. Assemblies start with a song from about 6 students who have simply incredible voices – I am going to record them next time! And then the headteacher gives a sort-of sermon from the bible and then gives out notices. Assemblies normally last about 30 minutes and close with everyone singing the national anthem – again, beautifully sung! At around 4:30pm we start cooking on alternate days, we have to cook nice and early as it gets dark at 6:30pm and cooking in the dark isn’t fun! It normally takes around 1 ½ hours from starting cooking to eating which is much improved from when we arrived. Once we have finished eating then I will either plan lessons, read my book or eat biscuits – I normally end up doing the latter two! We have 3 buckets that are our lifeline, we leave 2 out to collect rain water and make sure one is filled up with water from the bore-hole just for drinking. In an average week I would wash my clothes once which takes around 40 minutes, however I am still pretty rubbish at removing stains (I hope mum can save my clothes once I get home!). Over the past couple of weeks I have not been washing myself at home as it takes too long and is so unrewarding – instead I wait until the weekends when I go down to the lake and take my shampoo and have a wash/swim! It may not be very hygienic but it’s the lazy way of living!

We live in a little village called Fulirwa which is very tiny and about 15km from the nearest town of Ulewa. Fulirwa only has a few small shops that sell soya pieces, soaps, eggs and of course cokes so we have to do most of our shopping in Ulewa. The “centre” of Fulirwa is a strange little outdoors bar which always has around 5 or 10 men getting completely hammered on alcohol sachets, no matter what time of the day! I walked past there at 7:30am on a Tuesday morning and there were 2 men who were completely wasted, drunkenly chatting to me. The road from Fulirwa to Ulewa is even worse than Isle of Wight roads as it is just a dirt track with many, many potholes! If you are lucky enough to get a truck or bus then the journey can be done in 30 minutes but recently, due to the petrol crisis, vehicles are coming harder to find and normally I have to travel in using bicycle taxis which take around 1 hour and are completely unsafe! I normally make the trip in on Wednesday afternoons to pick up some groceries and then again at the weekend for whatever reason – normally to get away from the village!

Over the past couple of weeks it has been all about teaching and getting ready for exams coming up next week. Teaching is going well now, I love my Form 3’s and there are so many characters in the class… there is Gertrude who sits at the front and answers all the questions – loudly! There is Steven who is such a joker and larks around all the time, but is a good student; Samsung who tries his hardest but will never be quite there in terms of academics. There is a row of quiet girls who I am starting to think are the brightest in the class, Neema and Merina in particular who are always getting good grades! My favourite subject with them now is maths as I am confident with the stuff I am teaching them and I can actually feel them improving all the time. My Form 1’s are also lovely and teaching Commerce to them is good fun as they are starting to pick up what I am saying and applying it to other things. The class seems like there is a massive split between boys and girls, the boys answer all the questions and are on-the-ball all the time whereas the girls sit quietly and seem to need extra help all the time. I keep wondering whether this is because they are shy or whether this is the case all across Malawi as boys are educated more at a younger age, who knows? Anyway, teaching English is a struggle… they seem to have a strange mix of knowledge as they know some tricky stuff but then sentence structure isn’t easy for them. Their spelling always amuses me as they always get their ‘r’ and ‘l’ mixed up… I gave them a spelling test and all got “play” and “pray” the wrong way round and a couple of interesting ways of spelling ‘rubbish’… “labech”! But overall teaching is going well and I am fairly confident about their end-of-term exams.

I have started two after school clubs which I am quite excited about. The first one is Scrabble Club, which is going well. I found four Scrabble boards in the schools library and thought it would be a good thing for the students to learn. On the first club day we had 7 pupils turn up and then the day later we had 17 show their faces, which was a bit tricky as we only have room for 16 on the games. The younger kids in form 1 and 2 aren’t great at all but at least they try, they make simple words like ‘are’ and ‘me’ but can’t seem to grasp some of the rules of the game. However the form 3’s and 4’s are getting quite good at it which is excellent as the game helps their English tremendously! I have started a Scrabble Championship, the winner of each game gets 10 points, 2^nd gets 7, 3^rd gets 3 and 4^th gets 1… they seem to lovely the idea of competition but I still need to think of a decent prize for the winners at the end of the year. The other club I have set up is called “Business Enterprise” and we are basically pretending to set up a little business. So many of my form 3’s want to go into business but their general knowledge of the subject is terrible so I thought I would try and give them some practical experience. We are creating a school tuck-shop and in the coming weeks I will be teaching them how to write business plans, budget, do cash-flow forecasts etc. This idea came from Miss Jones and Miss Reed, my business teachers all the way back in year 10 when I pretended to set up a business back then – so thank you! They have carried out market research and found out what the students what to be sold in the tuck shops and they have since made colourful graphs showing the data. We have decided job roles: manager, sales, marketing and HR and next up I am teaching them what a Gantt Chart is! Let’s hope they do well in this and at the end of the year they can give a presentation to the school and what they have done.

My birthday was definitely the start of the rainy season… it may have been about 2 months late but the rainy season is now here, which is great news as their crops were beginning to fail again. It rains just about everyday now, from small spots of rain to giant storms – one of which we had on one Sunday which was excellent as the rain filled up our 3 buckets within one hour. The rain was so intense that time that every path became a stream and our back yard was under about 3 inches of water, which was too tempting not to go out and play in. The temperature doesn’t seem as vicious as it was before and I can feel my tan lessening as the days go on – hopefully it will improve again once we are on holiday. Everyone seems to be relieved that the rains have eventually come, and so they should be as the vast majority of people around us are farmers and their lives depend on this rainy season… long may it continue.

Since we have moved to our new placement I have looked in envy at Chloe and Elizabeth’s cooking. All they have is a wood fire with a few pots and pans and yet they are able to make cakes, scones and flapjacks. So over the long-weekend that we had I made it my challenge to try and emulate their successes. Whilst in Mzuzu I bought some flour and sugar as well as some mandasi mix – and excitedly came home with my goodies. Cooking on a coal fire is different from cooking at home, instead of just chucking the cake mixture in the oven and leaving it to cook on 180 degrees for 20 minutes; you have to make two fires. A small fire at the bottom, then put your tin on the fire and then make a larger fire on top of the tin… this took some time to get sorted but eventually I did it. It wasn’t the most precise cake I have ever made as we have no measuring devices so I just bunged in the ingredients and hoped for the best… After about 20 minutes of worrying and stoking the fires I lifted off the lid and there was a cake! Like a proper cake! And it tasted like a cake, a proper cake. You have no idea how proud I was – 1 month ago I didn’t know how to start a coal fire and now I am baking cakes!! I made my second cake later in the week, this time it rose properly and tasted incredible, particularly with a layer of strawberry jam on top! My next challenge is to make mandasi’s which are balls of deep-fried dough – the ones you buy from bakeries and on the street are delicious so I will hopefully be able to make them soon but after failing at making pancakes the other day I am quite worried and don’t want another cooking disaster on my hands. I will update you with how my baking skills go in the next blog!

We have also made a great addition to our dinners in the evening after we have found soya pieces which add to a meal well. They are about 40% protein which is excellent news as we had been lacking protein desperately from our cooking. Instead of just boring rice with a tomato sauce we now have rice, soya pieces and a tomato sauce with peppers, onions and garlic – getting fancier all the time! We have bought a lot of fresh spices that we are experimenting with; Anthony likes to put a lot of chili powder in his sauce I have noticed!! All the time our meals are evolving and my cooking ability has improved dramatically which is excellent, considering I have 4 years at University ahead of me! Every time I go into a city with a good market I get excited about all the food on offer, last week I picked up some carrots and lemon from Mzuzu. Next time I may try and involve cabbage into the meal at some point which will be a nice change. Also, yesterday we had a new arrival to our household… the headteacher needed more space in his house to fit his 11 children that he is looking after, so he bought us a dining table and five chairs. The deal is perfect, he gets more space and we get furniture which is incredible! After just 5 minutes of the table being in the house it was full with food that was previously ant-infested on the floor. We are now eating our meals at the table, under candle-light… how romantic!

We are starting to get a few more animals in our house which is always interesting. We still have a tone of ants in every room and we are still trying to work out a way of getting rid of them. Our most successful way of killing the ants so far is with a lighter and deodorant and burn the annoying things! This worked brilliantly until the flame got out of hand and completely burnt all my arm hair off. But recently more and more animals have been flooding in, first there was a mouse in some water we left on the floor. I woke up early on a day off to find this mouse struggling to get out of a washing-up bowl we had left on the floor… Anthony had to deal with this one. Then there was Ed the millipede (named after Ed Miliband) who was MASSIVE! Anthony thought it was a snake at first but when it turned out to be just a millipede he removed it from the house. The other… more pressing issue we have now is a scorpion! We saw it crawling around my feet the other day and ran to put on our shoes, by the time we got back the scorpion was gone – now we have to wear shoes all the time instead of comfy flip-flops which is a bit annoying! As yet our house isn’t as bad as the one we left back at Nkhata Bay – no infestation of mosquitoes or bugs but it’s getting there, slowly.

It is coming to the end of the term and therefore we have been busy preparing end of term exams for our Form 1’s and 3’s. I have five classes in total and I have also been typing up the exams of the other teachers onto the school laptop which is long-winded but harmless. The exam season started on Wednesday and goes on for one week, as soon as I finish marking and writing a report card for all the students then the holiday begins… we are hoping to be on the move on the Thursday or Friday! We have left all the planning to Jen and Julia, which has been difficult for me as I love planning but I can trust them to come up with an awesome plan – and they have succeeded. So the plan… 9 of us are meeting up in Lilongwe on the 24^th March and staying the night, then heading off early in the morning on a bus into Zambia – could be interesting! The bus continues all the way to Victoria Falls which will take a day or so, we may have to stay over night in the capital of Zambia, which is apparently pretty dodgy! Anyway, we intend to spend a few days at Victoria Falls – seeing all the sights and doing some activities like bungee-jumping or white-water-rafting! We may also possibly jump over the border to Zimbabwe to see the falls from the other side, apparently worth a visit. Then we will head back through Zambia on a sleeper-train to a wildlife reserve which is said to be the best in Southern Africa! The plan is to spend a couple of days there doing safari sort of things before traveling back into Malawi and heading down south to Blantyre which is in striking distance of Mount Mulanje which we are hoping to climb. The ascent is quite tricky according to the guide book and will take one day to scale, spend one day on top and then one day back down again! After that the plans become a little faded, we may possibly spend a few nights at Cape Mclear and then head up to Chilumba on the ferry or I may go and do some independent travel – Mozambique is pretty close, and it would be another country ticked off the list of places to visit!! So overall the holiday is going to be pretty packed – just the way I like it, with an enormous amount of stuff to do… I really don’t have a clue how I am going to pack for a 3 week holiday that includes mountaineering and safari in just one backpack.

This weekend I am going to a camp down south for Alice’s 18^th birthday. Apparently it is a little village just like ours and nice and rural. I am meeting up with the Bwengu Girls (Sarah, Marcella and Jess) and traveling down with them as Anthony has been invited to the capital by the Irish Embassy for St. Paddy’s Day – I wanted an invite too but I don’t think an Englishman would be very welcome in there (particularly when we beat them in the rugby on the same day!) There should be a good few of us camping for the birthday party so it should be a nice weekend away before our real holiday starts!

I really can’t seem to get blog posts short anymore… this one I think is my longest yet and I have a feeling my next one could be quite a biggy too! Thank you for reading and if you have any questions then please comment and I will try and answer them next time. Also if you want to send me any letters then all are most welcome, just send me a quick email and I will give you my address! All letters will be replied to of course.

Hippos and cake.

Okay… please don’t be put off by the size of this post, if you have to then read it over multiple days, but please read it as I want to share with you the most amazing weeks of my life!

As I told you in the last post, we were going to go to Blantyre on Thursday morning after our lessons had finished, we left our little village at around 10am and started the ridiculously long trip to the far south of Malawi. After only 3 hours we were in Mzuzu where would catch the night-bus all the way to Blantyre, but first we met with the other northern volunteers and ate some rather wonderful food – I had an ice cream which was the first ice cream I have had whilst in the country. At 4:30pm we all bundled onto the night-bus (which did remind me slightly of the night-bus in Harry Potter) and got our seats for the 13 hour long trip. I ended up sitting next to English Anthony which was good as he also couldn’t get any sleep so instead we sat up all night and watched Bill Bailey on his iPod! After multiple stops for food and water we made it to Blantyre at around 5am in the morning, I was quite impressed with myself as I had managed to go 18 hours without going to the toilet at all! We all stumbled off the bus and walked to the resort that we would be staying at called Doogles which was about a minute walk from the bus. Doogles was a lovely place with many big dorm rooms, 2 bars, a TV, swimming pool and of course a pool table! It didn’t take long before the other volunteers from across the country started turning up and we sat chatting to them and discussing everything Malawi. Within 30 minutes I had remembered why I got on well with so many of them, as well as remembering why some of them annoyed me completely!! After a quick dip in the pool and lunch in the city we got the call that Hannah was on her way so we all hid behind the trees and jumped out of her when she arrived which worked pretty well and she really didn’t have a clue about her surprise party! After yet more chatting and swimming in the pool we got the alcohol out… in Malawi you can buy sachets of spirits that are 30ml and supposed to be 40% alcohol costing around K20 each (5p), so you can guess we stocked up well on those. After drinking only 4 of them I was fairly drunk, along with many other volunteers so we aren’t entirely sure they are actually 40%!!

Saturday was another chill-out day with lunch in the city (this time a pizza – my first in 7 weeks), randomly walking around the cities markets. I found a material shop selling a vast array of bright cloth and I thought it would be amazing to try and get a tailor-made shirt for me… so I picked out the brightest material I could find and then went to a street vendor who took my measurements and told me it would be ready in 3 hours. After 3 hours I went back to the man with great excitement and he handed over the shirt, which in return I gave him K1,500 for (£6). The shirt is perfect, a pretty collar shirt with pockets and everything – not bad for £6 eh? So good that I decided to go back on the Sunday I get another one made, this time it cost £4, pretty pleased with those purchases.

The Saturday and Sunday passed without too much happening, just more chatting and swimming and general relaxing. However on the Sunday evening they were showing the African Cup of Nations final in Doogles so of course I had to stay up and watch it. I had been 7 weeks without watching a game of football and my god how did I miss it! Everyone in the bar was supporting Zambia as they are on the border to Malawi so I felt as if I should follow the crowd, also Zambia were huge underdogs and the British love an underdog! The game was fairly boring but the crowd seem to cheer for anything, even everytime Zambia got a throw-in there were cheers from the 40 people in the bar. Well eventually the game went to penalties which were so entertaining, particularly when Ivory Coast missed their 2 penalties and Zambia went on to win. I was jumping up and down with Claus and the rest of the bar, singing and celebrating a great win, cars were hooting their horns and flags were being waved – I LOVE AFRICAN FOOTBALL FANS!

Anyway, we woke up Monday morning knowing that we didn’t have to go back home this week as it was our half-term holiday but we didn’t actually know what we wanted to do. There were a couple of suggestions of hiking up Mount Mulunje and going on a safari but no one seemed overly keen on anything. After about 3 hours of planning in the morning we decided to go and visit Mount Mulunje, but probably no go hiking as it takes a whole day! We got someone to drive us to the mountain and found a guide that would show us on a little walk to some waterfalls. The walk was lovely and peaceful but incredibly hot and it wasn’t too long before shirts started to come off. We came across the waterfalls after about 30 minutes of walking and we were instantly amazed, they looked to beautiful. We were told we could go swimming so one by one we all stripped off and jumped into the deep water which was so cold and fresh that it was perfect for swimming. There were 7 of us in total there, the 2 Anthony’s, Claus, Rakesh, Ebony, Jess and myself and we asked the guide if he could take a few pictures of us jumping off the rocks. I reluctantly handed over my camera and had to look away as he jumped from rock to rock to get a good view of us and the waterfall… we then spent the next hour posing from different rocks around the place and jumping off while he was taking the photos. After inspecting the 300 photos that were taken we were very happy and went off back down the mountain!

We got back to Doogles and checked on Sarah who was sick with malaria and unable to join us on our trip, I felt so sorry for her as we came back all ecstatic from our adventure. So to cheer her up I let her cut my hair – something she had been asking to do all weekend! When I asked how much experience she had with hairdressing she replied with a simple, “None…” Excellent.  Everyone gathered around to watch the mayhem unfold with my hair but she was too nice and didn’t want to mess it up. Before I knew it the scissors were in Marcella’s hands – she was less sympathetic to the situation I was it and decided to obliterate my hair with help from Jess and Ebony. By the time they had finished I was left with about 6 bald patches and hair so short I looked like I was from This Is England. Thanks girls. I was up at 6am the next morning and straight down the barbers to sort the mess out… he was quite amused with the condition of my hair but did an excellent job to fix it up.

On the Tuesday we still didn’t know what we wanted to do, some of us wanted to go back up north whilst others wanted to stay in the south for a little while. I decided that I was going to stay with Marcella, Jess and Sarah for the week as their plans seemed to fit mine but we couldn’t leave until Wednesday as Sarah was still feeling a bit fragile. No matter, this gave us an extra day of planning what we were going to do on our exciting adventure. Marcella wanted to go to a wildlife reserve; Sarah wanted to go to Cape Mclear whilst we all wanted to go on the ferry on Friday morning from Monkey Bay… we just needed a way to fit all of this into 3 days! Easy…

On Wednesday morning we were up at 5am and ready at the bus station at 6. Today we were going to Liwonde National Park which is about 3 hours drive from Blantyre. Once we arrived at Liwonde we phoned the safari camp we were staying at and they came down to give us a lift. They arrived in a 1940s war-like car that was all metal and clunky without any roof, it was brilliant! Riding around town in style! The safari camp was a 30 minute drive up a dirt track which immediately made us feel like we were in Africa. The camp itself was perfect with a big lounge area that had a wonderful set of furniture everywhere, a self-serve bar (something that really wouldn’t work back home), and 19 beds to the 4 of us as it was out-of-season! We arrived at 12 and within 2 hours we were back in the car on a safari! It was my first real safari (I add the word “real” in there as I have been to one in Animal Kingdom in Florida) and I wasn’t disappointed. There were animals everywhere, baboons, antelope fighting, lizards and many other animals that I don’t know the name of! Unfortunately we didn’t see any elephants properly; they were far in the distance but close enough to get us further excited. After 2 and a half hours we headed back to our lodge and had cottage pie for dinner (yes, my first cottage pie in 7 weeks too!) We were back up bright and early the next morning at 5:30 ready for a canoe safari at 6 in which we hoped to see some hippo’s. We had 2 canoes between us, Sarah and I in one and Marcella and Jess in the other along with a man to canoe us. We immediately found a problem as there was a small hole in the bottom of our boat and water was trickling in, however when we saw the girl’s boat we realised that we were lucky as they had about 4 holes around the boat. Despite the holes we set off up the stream, passing huge birds and beautiful sites as we went. Then we came to an open space in front and over the other side were a collection of small black dots coming out of the water. We headed for them very slowly and the small black dots turned out to be huge, fat hippos. There were around 12 of them and we kept of sailing closer and closer until we were about 15 metres away… at this point my camera was in overdrive as I was taking as many photos as possible of the creatures. Everywhere we went from then we found more hippos, we must have seen about 30-40 of them during our 3 hour canoe session. The whole thing was completely amazing and well worth the $20 that we paid!

After a quick breakfast at the safari camp we were back on our way again – this time to Cape Mclear which used to be Malawi’s top tourist destination but now it has been taken over by Nkhata Bay. We arrive about 5 hours later feeling quite angry as we had been ripped off at every stage of our journey to the cape but we were immediately calmed once we saw where we were staying. We had booked a cottage at a place called Fat Monkey’s which cost K2,000 each (£8), I went straight over to the fridge that was in the kitchen (my first fridge in 7 weeks!) and had a photo with it. We then decided to go for a little walk, 20 yards from our front door was the beach... beautiful golden sand and a view to die for! We met a Swedish couple who we had got talking to back at Doogles a couple of nights before and discussed how weird it was to be staying at the same place once more. After only 10 minutes we were approached by a man with a list of activities that we could do, and only 30 minutes after that we were on a boat heading for a little deserted island where we could go snorkelling and feed an eagle. It was my first time snorkelling but I soon got used to it and soon loved looking through the crystal-clear water to the thousands of coloured fish that swam beneath me. We boarded the boat again just as the sun was setting and I got a few decent pictures of the sun disappearing into the lake. Once back on shore we had dinner and continued chatting to the Swedish couple about our plans. We realised we never found out their names properly but we think the guy was called Moss and we have named the girl Ulrika because it sounds Swedish!! We arranged we would meet them for breakfast the next morning at 6:30 which would give us enough time to make it to Monkey Bay.

The ferry from Monkey Bay left once a week, at 10 on a Friday morning so we arrived with an hour to spare and bought tickets. I bought a 1^st class ticket to Nhkotakota where I would be getting off and meeting Anthony, Jen and Julia, whereas the girls were going all the way to Nkhata Bay which would take nearly 2 days! Before we boarded the ferry I had just about enough time to buy my mum a present which I saw and knew she would like. It is a wooden frog that makes a noise if you play it’s back… I paid K1000 (£4) plus some dirty boxers that the guy wanted for some reason! Bargain, means I don’t have as much to wash now!! The ferry was beautiful, it looked like it was straight out of the 1930s with a steam funnel and dented, black metal-work. First-class just meant the deck of the ship, we didn’t have any beds or rooms but at least it was open and spacious. There were around 12 of us on the top deck with a bar and multiple chairs and benches. We set sail just after 10am and I was due to arrive in Nhkotakota at around midnight – perfect… a day of utter relaxing! There wasn’t much to do on the boat, except read, write and sunbathe in the beautiful hot sun – something I did a lot of! Whilst docked at one port we asked if we could go swimming, once we got the thumbs-up we decided that we were going to jump off the boat into the lake. I thought we were going to jump from the lowest deck but then one of the South African passengers managed to persuade me to jump from the roof… it was about 15 metres high!! I was joined by Sarah on the roof and we both were unsure of it so decided to hold hands and run for it however as we ran to the edge I suddenly stopped with fear but Sarah continued and jumped straight into the lake. She was not best pleased with me and it took me 4 attempts to trick my mind into jumping off the roof, so glad I did it in the end!! After the excitements we all sat together and chatted as we watched the sunset over the lake whilst passing many small islands and drinking beer… the day was wonderful. In the evening we joined the other passengers onboard and it reminded me of a scene from The Boat That Rocks as we all sat in a circle and talked about past experiences. The boat trip was perfect and was over far too quickly for my liking – at 2am I had to jump into a lifeboat that would take me to land. The whole thing seemed quite Titanic-y as it was chucking it down with rain, lightning, thunder and I looked over my shoulder at the boat I was saying good-bye to.

On the Saturday Anthony and I were reunited and we were soon joined by Jen and Julia who showed us around their town. We went to some hot springs that were indeed very hot, I dipped my toe in for a second and burned them! We then had a relaxing time on the beach and finished off the day by eating a delicious cheese-cake… lovely!

Anyway, the holiday was all but over and Sunday we planned to travel back to our home, which was around 200km away and in theory should only take about 7 hours. Instead we had a journey from hell, our bus never turned up and we caught a series of minibuses that either went slower than you could ever imagine or that broke down! Anthony lost his wallet on the last bus we got and had to stay over-night at Matt’s lodge as we arrived at midnight and there was no transport back. Eventually we reached home 23 hours after we were due to leave Nhkotakota! Fun times!!

So we were back at our placement teaching, well sort of. At the weekend we were off again, this time heading to Nkhata Bay to meet up with 15 of our friends to celebrate my 19^th birthday. We met many of them in Mzuzu and travelled back to where my adventure had all begun, back to the bay! After arriving at around 4pm on the day before my birthday I didn’t waste any time and I went straight into the lake for a refreshing dip. It was such a good feeling to be back at the bay, in a strange kind of way I had missed it but I would never change back! That evening, my birthday-eve we had a nice BBQ at Mayoka Village (our home for the 2 days) and followed it up with plenty of drinking at the bar. Later on we decided to walk into the town to soak up some of the “nightlife” of the bay, whilst there Claus tried to chat up a prostitute who he thought was a hairdresser – typical Claus. Rakesh bought me a rum that I downed as the clock struck midnight and everyone wished me a happy birthday, which was nice of them!

My birthday started off in a very traditional English way with heavy rain and a full English breakfast, however I don’t normally have to take malaria tablets back at home. I opened up the cards from my parents and my gran which made me feel of home in such a nice way. Then it was time for our boat trip that we had organised… we went all around the bay, did some snorkelling, cliff jumping and played beach football with some of the locals that we found. We spent about 4 hours on the trip and it was so incredibly relaxing, however a tad cold from all the rain!! The organisers were very kind and said that I could have to boat trip free as it was my birthday – a nice saving of K2,000! Once back on land I was treated to some lovely surprises by the other volunteers… Margo and Claus bought me 10 packs of my favourite biscuits (possibly the best present anyone could give me… I am a bit addicted to biscuits over here.) Also Chloe and Elizabeth had baked me some amazing peanut butter cookies on their open fire and made me a lovely poem. Anthony bought me some new earphones as my last pair had broken, whilst Sarah, Marcella and Jess had bought me a “family bracelet” which they were wearing the same and had made me a beautiful paper chain people thing of the four of us, each one with a message from the 3 of them. Finally all the volunteers had bought me chocolate cake which was so incredibly nice. During the whole day I was amazed with how generous they had all been and I didn’t miss home once – something I never thought would happen!

My birthday was also shared by a wedding going on at the place we were staying for the weekend. The bride was a barwomen who worked there so they had chosen to deck out the place with beautiful streamers and flowers. 200 people had been invited (they had all come to wish me a happy birthday really!!) and in the evening the place was packed with a lovely mix of locals and members of the English family. There was live music played by one man and a guitar who had the most amazing voice and sung some great songs including “How big is your lake, your lake is so big, so big, so big!” which really got the crowd going. I challenged some locals to a few games of pool – I lost but I am blaming my slight drunkenness for this! All in all it was such a brilliant birthday and I was again sad to leave everyone behind. Every time we all meet up I feel that we all bond so much and I know that in 4 months time I will have to say goodbye to a lot of the other volunteers for the last time.

Back at our placement things are going well, it is coming up to exam period so I am in the middle of writing all my exams for my classes which is long and tiresome. Also Anthony and myself have agreed to help out and type up all the other teachers exams, the Chichewa exam is quite tricky to type!! The other day whilst teaching I was writing on the blackboard when my class started to laugh, I looked round to find a cow had just wandered into my classroom and one of the girls had to chase it away – this is Africa!!

Anyway I do realise I have written more than 3,500 words which is quite a few and I should probably stop now. Sorry for the massive blog post but the past 3 weeks have been simply insane… I hope you enjoyed reading it and I will keep you updated as soon as possible with everything!