Across lake Malawi

Here we are in Nkhata Bay, it’s a small but lively port town on the Northern end of lake Malawi and here we are back online again! You, probably like us, have realised we will not be able to keep the same rate of writing and posting pictures on the blog as we did from South East Asia :( but we will still do our best to share with you our trip, images and emotions from Africa.
After spending two wonderful weeks in Lilongwe with Barbara and Roberto we had a chance to experience all kinds of aspects of their young ex-pat life. We had wonderful dinners and barbeques, great parties and lazing at the lake, long conversations about development… and we also had memorable experiences that will stay with us forever: teaching English and Maths (you can guess who did the math part ;)) to children in an orphanage, visiting a refugee camp near Lilongwe which hosts people from all over Africa, some having been there for the last ten years and not much chance of going somewhere else… Someone said that Africa is joy and sadness at the same time and no matter how hard you try you cannot miss either.
After we sadly had to say good bye to Lilongwe we spent a day at the Mua Mission http://www.kungoni.org/chamare.htm, established by a rather flamboyant and controversial catholic priest who conducts baptisms wearing a leopard skin as a sign of incorporating the local traditions into Christianity, apparently a process known as ‘inculturation’. He has gathered the most comprehensive and amazing compilation of local traditions, songs, tales, as well as masks and dancing costumes, which give a deep ethnographic insight into Malawi and its people.
From there we went down to the lake again and took the famous ILALA, one of the last Great African Steamers that were going on the Great Lakes, it took us on a wonderful three day trip on lake Malawi, which we enjoyed to the full with long strolls on the deck, fun with interesting people, jumping in the water at ports and great chambo (the fish in lake Malawi) and mashed potatoes.
We will stay one more day here and tomorrow we will move further on north towards the Nyka Plateau and Mwaza Park where we hope to experience another wonder of Africa, its wild life! They promise us hippos, elephants, zebras, cheetahs and they even promise us we will get interested in bird-watching … (not sure about this one but we are always open to new experiences :)).

Miss you and starting to revive the old idea of the big bus of friends travelling through the world together :)

Oh yes and the car is fine :)