Spontaneity in Malawi

My thought process in deciding where to go after my Habitat project pretty much went like, “hm, I think I’ll go to Malawi,” and next thing I knew it I hopped the next bus out to Lilongwe (capital of Malawi). What was supposed to be a 12-hour journey turned into a solid 16 sweaty hours of attempting to sleep to the soothing sounds of frenzied bus honking, African tribal music, African choir music, Beyonce, Tupac, Akon and R.Kelly. Lo and behold I arrived at my backpackers (aka hostel) in Lilongwe at some ridiculous pre-dawn hour and hung out in the lobby for a few hours before they opened.

The beauty of staying at a backpackers is that you glean a lot of information and opportunities by meeting other travelers and overhearing their conversations. This is what opened the door for me to buy my tent as well as what set the rest of my Malawi travels in motion: that morning, two dudes heard me talking about wanting to camp the rest of the way through Africa. Bam, they had a tent for sale. Later, I heard a group talking about going to Cape Maclear so inquired about an extra spot in their car. Bam, I rode bitch in their car on the way to Cape Maclear.

As it turns out, my little hitch-hike to Cape Maclear turned into a week-long caravan extravaganza complete with 5 Israelis, 1 Belgian, 1 German, 1 Aussie and me. We paraded around southern Malawi as part of our own little tour group complete with getting group discounts as well as setting up a kitty – i.e. pot of money – to use for buying groceries and necessities. Aside from getting stopped at every police roadblock along the way (show me your brake lights, where are your triangles, where are your reflectors, give me some Fanta) it was nothing short of fantastic.

The highlights were relaxing along the shores of Cape Maclear as well as our 3-day backpacking trek up Mount Mulanje. Cape Maclear was all-around good times between swimming, snorkeling, reggae jamming, hair cutting (a bday buzz in Noy’s case) and drum seshing. Mt. Mulanje was a bundle of joy, beauty, excitement, hilarity, accomplishment, illness, dread and exhaustion all wrapped up in a package of awesomeness. After a solid week together, we hobbled our way back to Blantyre (#2 city in Malawi) where we had our final dinner and began to part ways.

I continued up the coast with the Israeli crew and got to learn some very important Hebrew phrases. You know, stuff like good morning, good night, sleep well, whatever, that’s BS, kiss my ass, I am a hungry hippo, go shave your beard and a standard pickup line which I successfully used on another unsuspecting Israeli traveler in Nkhata Bay.

Sadly, this is where I had to say goodbye to my new Middle Eastern friends and was back on my own. This was also where, for the first time, I felt a bit homesick. The lake at NB reminded me so much of the ocean complete with what looked like ride-able waves. I unsuccessfully attempted some body surfing before taking on the waves in a dugout canoe. Helen Keller would’ve had better luck at a game of hide-and-seek. A dugout canoe isn't exactly conducive to much of anything but wobbling around the surface of calm waters, let alone sloshing around amongst crashing waves. I had to turn back after realizing 80% of the canoe was submerged in water. The local kids definitely got a kick out of the crazy mzungu nearly capsizing her canoe.

I spent the next few days in Nkhata Bay chilling out lakeside and meeting some awesome new peeps including a pair of girls from Seattle who shared my weird sense of humor and pace of life.

So now I am back in Lilongwe where I’ll be helping out some Peace Corps volunteers set up for the launch of the EveryOne campaign for the Save the Children Foundation to combat mother & child mortality in developing countries.  Should be great!

Oh yeah, and while I’m here I need to to stock up on bilharzia meds after all that time swimming in parasitic-worm-infested waters. Gotta love African disease paranoia.