Celebrating America’s Independence

For the 4th of July, Christi, Kit, Jeremy, John and myself headed to Cape MacClear on Lake Malawi to celebrate America’s Independence day. I was so happy that Kit and Jeremy came with us because we haven’t seen them since last November at our in-service training. It had been a long time.

The trip didn’t start off on a good note due to transport. Poor John (the tallest of all of us) had to ride in the front of our car with another Zambian man on his lap while the four of us squeezed into the back to the border of Zambia/Malawi. No problem though. But once we got to Lilongwe our luck ran out once again. We had a verbal altercation with our mini-bus driver who claims we never paid even though we did and then we hit a goat and killed it which made the brakes go out in the bus. So we were hanging out on the side of the road when they told us they were heading back to Lilongwe. Well that didn’t work for us and we just paid a lot of money to go about an hour down the road. Of course they wouldn’t give our money back, so we decided to let it go and it was time to hitch. Along came this truck, perfect, right? Oh, no. Christi starts talking to the driver while we are all staring into the back of the truck. Right in front of us in the bed of the truck was a coffin holding a man that just died. We didn’t have a choice, even though I was against it everyone hopped in. The worst part was that the truck was so small we had to practically sit on the coffin. I know, it was so wrong. About 30km down the road we got dropped off at our turn-off. We were glad that was over. Then along came this car and I flagged him down. It was an officer of the Malawi military. We spoke in Nyanja and I explained we were stranded so he told us to hop in. Once again we squished 4 people in the back of a really small car. Two and a half hours later we arrived in Monkey Bay. The road that got us there went through the mountains with hairpin turns…no way our mini-bus would have survived that. So we found the last truck going to Cape MacClear for the day and they wanted to rip us off royally. We decided to wait it out and it worked in our favor. They finally brought the price down and we headed to our destination in the back of a cantor truck. At 17:30 we walked out to the beach at Fat Monkey’s (where we were staying) just in time to watch a beautiful sunset. Wow, what a first day.

The next day was super cold and not sunny at all. We sat on the beach and drank tasty beverages in our fleece jackets and long trousers. We met these girls from Belgium and joined them for dinner at some locals house where they made us fish/chicken with rice, potatoes and a fried banana for dinner. It was a bit strange yet cool to be sitting in some strange shack on the beach while 10 Malawians watched us eat by the fire.

The third day the weather warmed up a bit and we went snorkeling out on a beautiful island. I finally got in the water at the end of the day because it was so cold/windy. The fish were beautiful. Our boat was taking on water, however we enjoyed a tasty lunch of rice and fish/goat meat.

Our last day on the lake was super nice. It was hot and sunny all day. We mostly sat on the beach and drank while the guys messed around in the water on the lodges canoe. We tried to sing as many “proud to be an American” type songs while drinking and wandering what our friends and family were doing back home.

Our transport back to Zambia was horrible again but what can you do. I had a great time catching up with Kit and Jeremy and getting to know John. They’re great guys! I miss them already. So besides catching up with old friends, rumor has it that when you visit Lake Malawi you catch more than what you bargain for. The southern end of the lake apparently is infested with large amounts of Shisto/Bilharzia. Guess I’ll find out if I caught the shisto when I return home next year!