Where am I?

The problem with this trip is that we go from one place to another so fast that I often haven’t got a clue where I am. But we are spending four nights here…in Malawi – camping right by the lake, so I have nearly got the hang of that! When I say lake you will probably be imagining a still shining surface of water across which you can see land, when in fact it is far more like being by the sea. The wind is howling and the waves are crashing, and when I went for a swim yesterday I was nearly knocked over by one, they were that strong. Needless to say, I was the only one swimming…

However, the waves are good from one point of view. If the water is moving there is far less likely to be any bilharzias parasites floating around in it. After reading about it in the guide book, I decided there was no way I was swimming – snails that live on reeds eject these parasites and then they swim up and squirm their way under your skin and you might not know they are even there until a year later! It is possible that you will feel unwell, and you might get a red rash where they enter the skin, but they may just enter undetected and you’ll only find out they were there when they have done irreversible damage to your internal organs…hmmm…something to look forward to in a few months time! My good friend Jill kept warning me about bilharzias disease when I was swimming in Lake Kivu in Rwanda, and not realising quite how horrendous it is, I didn’t heed the warnings…though I now also read in the guide book that bilharzias probably isn’t around in Lake Kivu – there were no reeds where we were, and I never saw any snails…BUT people have apparently died by being asphyxiated by volcanic gases bubbling up from under ground and lurking around the surface of the lake! In fact it’s a wonder I’m alive at all. I think I might stop reading the lonely planet guide or I may not step outside the tent again!

So, to recap the time since I last wrote in Zanzibar, we drove down into Malawi…in fact I was wrong about popping through Mozambique – we do that next after Malawi. We stayed one night at a bush camp before we made it to the lake – that day we drove from 5am until 6pm and then camped in the middle of a forest…it was freezing cold, and you had to hope you didn’t need to pee in the night because it meant wandering into the trees and hoping to find a spot with no spiders or snakes! Then we had another long drive day and camped at a beach higher up the lake and after one more shorter drive with a stop at the local market to buy dressing up clothes for a party in Harare (Oh joy unbounded!) we arrived where we are now.

Yesterday two boys that I met on the beach in the morning – one of whom was called Winston Churchill – took us around the local village. They did a really good job, and we only paid them the equivalent of a pound each – we went to the orphanage, met the village chief, saw a water pump, cassava being peeled and dried, the local clinic and school and had a really good time. The only downside to the day was my realisation that having finished my video tape the day before and rewound it, I had forgotten to change it for a new one and videoed the tour on top of the most fantastic shots of a leopard up a tree devouring the gazelle it had caught earlier. Unbelievably gutting realisation, resulting in a mad swim in the roughest water I’ve ever been in followed by a glass of wine. And hey, when you haven’t drunk for 6 months, it really goes to your head!

Today is apparently pig day … on this campsite at least – don’t know about the rest of Malawi. A local took us to church this morning, and Tracy and I ended up singing Amazing Grace for the congregation… we kind of got used to impromptu performances in Rwanda. If we told anyone that we could sing, they would immediately request a song…on the spot! And not just in church, in random households with gatherings of people we’d never met, in the middle of a school playing field…you name it, we sung in it! Unfortunately due to lack of music our repertoire numbered only three songs that we could remember, the two first choices being Pie Jesu and Amazing Grace…so these we have sung to death. And as for the pig...it was alive at 8.30 this morning, it's now on a pole, rotating over a fire, with most of our group sat around it drinking and watching it cook! Can't say I'm enthralled, but each to their own. I think I'll have to eat it this evening I expect.

Well, I’m off to see if I can get this on the internet now. We are now half way through the trek and things have got a lot easier. People still get drunk every night and spend the next day feeling sick and hung over, and for them we might as well be in Ibiza…but we are making the most of the things we are seeing and doing, and we are certainly seeing and doing some things!