Malawi

Malawi!!

I had an amazing trip to Malawi last week! I went with three other volunteers, one of which is dating a rather wealthy Portuguese/Mozambican who has a car. The first night there we went to the lake and stayed at a really nice resort, which the wealthy boyfriend had arranged, but turned out to be more expensive than he had thought, so we were planning on leaving the next day. Coincidently, there was a video/camera crew coming the day after to make some videos/brochures promoting tourism in Malawi, and the owners of the resort needed some people to model and be interviewed. So they gave us a great deal: 75% off lodging and food, and FREE water activities, as long as they could take pictures/video us. We accepted!

First water activity: snorkeling. Lake Malawi is full of an endemic fish called the Cichlid, and other types of fish. Snorkeling tip: take a piece of bread with you, and tons of fish will come super close to eat out of your hand. Second water activity: sunset yacht cruise. They have a yacht called Mufasa, and the first night we were there was cloud-free, so we went out on the lake the see the sun set from the water. It was so beautiful, and free champagne was included! Mufasa has two bathrooms, a full kitchen with a fully stocked bar, and sleeps 10 people. Third water activity: kayaking. There’s an island not too far off the shore, so we kayaked our way there and back. Fourth water activity: water skiing. They have a “training bar” to teach people how to water ski. It stick off the side of the boat so you can practice first before going out on the rope. I successfully learned, and realized that water skiing is a lot more tiring than difficult. Fifth water activity: sailing acrobatics. I didn’t know really what I was getting myself into when they asked me to do this, but it was awesome! First, I got all suited up in a wet suit with these water-shoe boots. Then they gave me a giant diaper-looking harness to put on around my waist/legs, and we were off to the sailboat. There I attached a hook on the boat to my harness, which meant that I could lean out over the water as we sailed along. What with the wet suit and flying over the water, I kind of felt like a super hero off on a mission. We later decided that my super hero name would be “Flying Bass,” and that my mission, for example, could be that there’s another sailboat that was having problems, and I had to fly out there to give them supplies/help, and then we elaborated even more that there could be a baby on the other sailboat that I had to go save. We presented this idea to the owners, to make this movie and have it be part of the video, but for unstated reasons they opted not to take advantage of our brilliant creativity.

In addition to water activities, they also had various games, including Scrabble, a pool table, and a trampoline! I’m happy to report that I still know how to do flips. The room had hot showers, fluffy pillows, warm comforters (it was winter there, and it got cold at night), hair dryers, full-length mirrors, and were so clean. And the food! Beautifully arranged fruit plates, bacon, pancakes, yogurt, jasmine tea, burritos, chicken, avocado, chick peas, pasta, three-course dinners with chocolate cake, lemon pie, fish cakes, yum yum yum!! And we got along really well with the owners and the other staff there, they all gave us hugs goodbye when we left. I’m now considering the idea of working at a resort in Brasil next year, or in Argentina or Chile.

After we left the lake, we wanted to go to an animal reserve, but, as often happens in Africa, there was an unforeseen complication: Malawi ran out of gas. About a month or two ago, the Malawian president kicked out the British ambassador, who promptly withdrew all funding from Britain to Malawi (which was about 20% of the national budget) and cancelled Malawi’s foreign exchange, thus Malawi ran out of money (all public workers haven’t been paid since), and couldn’t buy gas. We waited in line for almost 5 hours trying to get gas the day we wanted to leave, but could manage to. The next day the boyfriend was able to get just enough gas for us to make it to the border, but I think he ended up paying the equivalent of about $15/gallon. (Just to give you an idea how much that actually is in Africa, my Peace Corps stipend comes down to about $7.50/day.) The five hours spent waiting in line for gas was supposed to be spent going in to Blantyre, the largest city in the south, to get some souvenirs, which we were unfortunately not able to do. But, despite not seeing the reserve and not getting souvenirs, we had a great trip!

I must say though, that hearing the Malawians speak English makes me very worried about the quality of my Portuguese. It was very difficult to understand many of them, and I seriously hope that Mozambican Portuguese is much more similar to Portugal’s than Malawian English is to Britain’s. We did find out that apparently in Malawi, much schooling is done in the national Bantu language, and not so much in English, so hopefully that’s why.

And about the video/pictures, I’m not sure if they’re online for general viewing or what, but if I find out I’ll post the site.