Very Much Delicious: Part 13

Part 13 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

Sometime during the night I had been awakened by the unmistakable sound of vomiting in the bathroom and had been uncharitable enough to think that it served him right. Now, at six O'clock in the morning, I was not quite as amused. I had been intending to take a bath but one look at the congealing mess in the bottom of the tub decided me against the idea. I washed and shaved at the sink as quickly as I could, carefully avoiding breathing as far as possible, and went for a walk.  Peter was already loading things onto the roof of the Land Rover. There seemed to be no-one else around and after half an hour I went back and finished my packing. Barry was doing a fair impression of a corpse and still hadn't moved by the time I was ready to take my bags down for loading and head to the restaurant for breakfast. By the end of breakfast he still hadn't surfaced and I was sent to wake him.

    Our first stop was at a sort of craft market. Here a couple of dozen stalls were laid out selling every type of carving conceivable. There were of course the ubiquitous tables and traditional animal carvings side by side with salt shakers and chess sets. Several people were selling the wooden chairs that are as common as the tables and almost as ingenious in their construction. Carved from two interlocking pieces of wood they are surprisingly comfortable and come in a range of sizes from dolls house to gargantuan. One of the traders wanted to swap two for my jacket. Had I had any way to get them home I would probably have taken him up on the offer.

From the market we carried on along the route that we had originally come from Lilongwe and, after a detour to avoid a washed out road, eventually came to Salima where we were to stay at a house at the Wheelhouse Resort. This turned out to be a large former colonial residence built into the side of the mountain in such a way that some of the walls and floors were formed from the rocks themselves. It was a rambling building on several levels with large spacious rooms that looked as if Stewart Granger or Trevor Howard should be leaning on the cocktail bar in their immaculate Safari suits discussing the season's elephant hunting.

The resort was named for its bar, a circular thatched building raised on stilts looking out across the reed marshes towards the lake. We passed this on our afternoon ramble which led us down through the rushes and to an unusual fish farm. This consisted of a large warehouse like building filled with small tanks and two equally large open air areas filled with big tanks. The operation was set up a few years ago to breed tropical fish from the lake for resale abroad and is now the largest supplier of exotic aquatics in Africa. There are more than two hundred species bred there and supplied to collectors all over the world.

By the time we had been shown around it was almost sunset and we headed back for a few beers in the bar before taking an early dinner and an early night. Tomorrow was to be yet another travelling day and our longest yet taking us all the way to the South Luanda National Park in Zambia. We were to be up for five a.m. to make sure that we could get there at a reasonable hour.

Very Much Delicious: Part 12

Part 12 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

Even before we were ready for breakfast the locals were setting out their wares to sell to us. As we ate they maintained a reasonable distance but almost as soon as we were finished they clustered around us. As we bartered the others started arriving from their mountain trip. They were tired and hot and dirty and not at all pleased to find that in addition to the power not having been restored the water supply had now also failed. However they soon realised that there was a river nearby and went off to bathe in its icy waters. By the time they had returned the buying and selling were in full swing. I had brought a CD rack and a table similar to the one we had seen at Zomba but, as Geoff had predicted, both nicer and cheaper. Sheila had bought what seemed like dozens of carved wooden boxes. Barry had also bought a table. Sometime during this market a group of local teenagers came running up with a chameleon on a stick. Sheila had particularly wanted to see one and they had gone and found one for her. It was a strange looking thing but harmless enough to allow it to walk on our bare hands. The Malawians though are very superstitious about them and would not handle it at all.
The salesmen were persistent and even when it was clear that no-one was going to buy anything else they were reluctant to give up. Fortunately a car arrived at one of the other houses further along the road and sensing better sales prospects they all hurried away after it.

Soon we were under way. Today was almost completely a travelling day. The journey was long and dull and covered much of the same route we had come by. It was late afternoon by the time we arrived at the Nkapola Lodge Hotel. This is a modern and well laid out up-market hotel owned by the same group that own the Ku Chawe Inn at Zomba. It is situated right on the shore of Lake Malawi. The rooms are well furnished with every bed having a permanent and spacious mosquito net and with a large fan lazily circulating the air to keep the temperature down.
I spent the rest of the afternoon having a long soak in a hot bath, wandering around the extensive grounds and having a drink on the terrace bar. Outside the hotel rooms, which opened directly onto a tree covered rocky hillside, a large group of rock hyrax were constantly keeping a watchful eye on us. These animals look like large chipmunks and are friendly and inquisitive. On the roofs and the ground vervet monkeys were a little shyer of human contact, scurrying around happily until anyone approached closer than about thirty feet when they would run and leap away with amazing speed and agility. It seemed a nice enough place for an interlude but, animals aside, the atmosphere was too much like any other beach resort with teenagers in swimming costumes playing volleyball on the sand and youngsters being entertained by a disc jockey playing loud disco music to them. While I was glad enough of the chance to use civilised facilities I was also glad that we would only be spending one night there, more than that would send me crazy.
We had arrived on a day when the hotel had organised a beach barbecue for the evening so that our meal was taken at a long table beneath the stars, The food was excellent with an enormous variety of vegetables, meat and fish as well as soups and salads for a first course and trifles, cakes, fruit salads, ice cream and such for dessert. I sat near the end talking to Geoff and Charlotte. Little Kenny was feigning sleep on a mattress behind them.
Barry was irritating me again. He had been spouting off rather pompously about wine and had ordered several bottles of quite expensive white - apparently to prove a point. So much had he ordered that there was a bottle and a half of it still in front of him when everyone else was ready for bed. I sat and finished my beer and listened to him complaining how he was buying all the wine and no-one else was paying for it. I pointed out rather too sharply that as I wasn't drinking the stuff I felt under no obligation to contribute towards it. He seemed a little put out at my brusque tone but I also felt no obligation to be polite.

I finished my beer and left him alone with his bottles.

Very Much Delicious: Part 11

Part 11 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

After a breakfast of a little bread and fruit I waited outside the house for the guide who was to take Sheila and I on a walk to the waterfall. Peter and Barry were looking at the Land Rover which seemed to have developed yet another puncture. Rather than leave it and waste time when Geoff and the others returned we decided to put on the spare wheel and then for Barry and Peter to take the damaged one to town for repair. They were on their way by the time the guide, Anthony, arrived.

The first section of our walk followed the route taken yesterday by our more adventurous colleagues. We started off up the hill and I was surprised to discover that our houses were only the start of a fairly extensive village with some quite affluent looking buildings including a school and a community hall.

Anthony proved to be a chatty sort of a guide. He was, we discovered, in the final year of high school and worked as a guide in his holidays to earn money ready for University in Zomba. He wanted to go to Chancellor College to study medicine but after that he wanted to work in the villages not at the more lucrative city clinics. We talked as we walked. The views back down the hill and out across the valley were spectacular and while there were no animals and few birds to be seen there were lots of colourful flowers and occasional bright butterflies.

Anthony's school curriculum consisted of maths, English, biology, geography and bible knowledge - all of which were compulsory. I questioned him more closely. His courses seemed to be an eccentric blend. In biology he had learned basic anatomy and how to distil spirits. His history lessons, while largely restricted to Malawian history were often entirely contradictory on even such elementary facts as when Hastings Banda was born. In English the set books were Macbeth and The Diary of Anne Frank. This led us to another peculiar discrepancy - this time in his English which was really very good. While he knew words like 'pulmonary' and  'aorta' he had just come across the phrase 'Is this a dagger that I see before me ?' and had no idea at all of what a dagger might be. Having told him, I then found myself discussing the guilt that Macbeth felt and the way that it led to the visions of ghosts and phantom daggers. He seemed to be memorising every word I said.

    After about half an hour the route separated from the one to the mountain hut and levelled out. At the top of the rise we came to a logging camp. We went through it and started down the other side. At the bottom was the waterfall. This was hardly spectacular but was a pleasant place to stop made more pleasant by the flask of tea and packet of biscuits that we had brought with us.

    We returned by a different but no less scenic route. Anthony obligingly pointed out whatever animals and flowers he could find and while the animals were mainly lizards and frogs they were nevertheless interesting. One lizard, only feet away from us was almost invisible against the bark of a tree until it moved its head. On a moss covered rock face there were tiny green and yellow frogs, less than a centimetre long.  A large red and black insect buzzed around a group of purple flowers.

    We were off course still on the lookout for the absent birds. It was Sheila who spotted the large bird of prey in the distance. We watched for some time through binoculars, carefully noting down everything we could about it to help in later identification. When we got back to the houses Barry was sitting outside talking to two Malawi children, aged about six or seven who had been playing with Kenny. We quickly borrowed his books and soon had it worked identified as a Honey Buzzard.While we had been away the power had failed and the meat which Peter had transferred from the trailer to the refrigerator in the house had gone off. Not to be defeated by this he lit a fire on the back porch and cooked us a delicious concoction from tinned tuna fish and vegetables. I decided that if I wasn't cured by now I wasn't going to be and joined in the meal which we ate by candle light. As the power hadn't returned when we had finished we chose to have an early night.

Very Much Delicious: Part 10

Part 10 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

Still a little unsure of my stomach I chose not to eat breakfast before our next travelling day. We started with a short drive down to Zomba where Geoff went off to get our repaired wheel and the rest of us spent an hour exploring the densely packed stalls of Zomba Market. This is a large market with a number of brick halls in it as well as hundreds of wooden stalls. Two of the buildings are filled with fruit and vegetables while a third sells only grain and rice and a fourth sells fish that, judging by the smell, is already a long way past its edible date.

    We left Zomba on a very bad road which had once been tarmacked but had deteriorated to the point where it was very nearly undrivable. It was made worse by the standard of local driving and a use of signals so eccentric as to border on the surreal. Most drivers use their left signal to indicate to traffic behind them that there is traffic ahead of them, their right indicator to indicate that there is no traffic ahead of them and both indicators together to indicate that they are too drunk to be able to see whether there is traffic ahead or not. Nobody ever uses them to indicate an intention to turn. The result was a fraught and unpleasant couple of hours being rattled around like marbles in a tin can listening to Geoff blast the horn as time after time he was forced to lean on it to encourage people to get out of the way.

There were occasional distractions.

We drove for several miles through tea plantations where there were hundreds of pickers all dressed in yellow oilskins against the dreadful weather.

At a point where the road was being repaired we were diverted past on a sandy track and looking at the work being done it became obvious why the roads disintegrated so easily. It was being constructed by laying a paper thin layer of tarmac on top of an equally thin layer of coarse gravel which was laid directly on top of the sandy ground.

We were forced to stop to tighten the nuts on one of our wheels near a coffee plantation where we got out and stretched our legs for a few minutes and took a few pictures in the grey light of the rain soaked morning.

A funeral procession of dozens of slow moving mourners blocked the road. We tried to pass and an angry mourner, appalled at our disrespect banged on our windows and shouted abuse.

    At Mulanje town we turned off this highway onto a dirt track and once again I noticed that the quality of the dirt roads was actually much higher than the tarmac ones. We paused to let someone climb on board. He turned out to be the leader of the porters who would go up Mount Mulanje. A few minutes later we reached a group of single storey brick buildings. Before we had even come to a halt a group of locals were gathered trying to sell us things. Geoff was having none of it. He told them sharply that no-one would be buying anything today and that anyone who hung around wouldn't be welcome when we did buy things in two days time. Reluctantly they all packed up their selections of traditional carved animals, traditional carved tables, traditional carved boxes and traditional carved CD racks and left.

Geoff turned to us.

    "Now, " he said "I've decided that those of us going up the mountain will be going today. In about twenty minutes. The weather has cleared up for the moment and as we can't guarantee tomorrow we will go while we have the chance. Sheila, Barry and Bob have decided to stay behind so how do the rest of you feel ?"

There were some grumblings and misgivings but Louise, David and Sarah all agreed. An hour later, rather than the expected twenty minutes, they were on their way.

    Mount Mulanje is an isolated block of mountains covering about 245 square miles. It rises from a flat and featureless plain 2000 feet above sea level. The granite peak, Sapitwa4, is the highest in central Africa at almost 10000 feet. The whole mountain is covered by a variety of trees, brachystegia, imported exotic pines and eucalyptus and the endemic Mulanje Cedar from whose aromatic wood so many of the carvings are made. This tree is unique to the massif. Typically it reaches 140 feet with a clear trunk to about 60 feet and a base diameter of 5 or 6 feet. However over-felling and poaching of the wood is causing severe deforestation.

    The house where we were staying was two bedroomed with a small dining room, a kitchen and a toilet and shower room. The bedrooms each contained two primitive and uncomfortable beds, the dining rooms a couple of chairs and a table, the kitchen a sink with a single tap and a gas ring and the toilet a similar sink, a flush toilet and an unhygienic looking shower.

    It was because of my continuing stomach problems that I had decided not to do the optional ascent. At lunch I had foolishly decided to eat a few sandwiches, having not eaten for the previous twenty four hours. It had been a mistake and several more trips to the toilet convinced me that not climbing the mountain had been a good idea. It also convinced me not to eat in the evening. Nevertheless I did join the others while they ate and when the meal was over we sat around talking. Part of the conversation demonstrated exactly what was wrong with Barry. I had told the story of how when I was in Cuzco in Peru I had given a pen to a child begging in the main city square. The next day the same child had come up to me and proudly showed me that he still had the pen. Barry of course could do better. In his version of the story he had not given a beggar a pen because that would have been encouraging a dependency culture. Instead he had sat down and given the child an English lesson. Several other children had come until he was taking a whole class. The next day the child was back with one of his teachers from school who insisted that Barry should go with her to the school and teach a class of the teachers. He had ended up, or so he said, as a guest lecturer at the University.

    I have no idea whether story was entirely true, entirely fictional or somewhere in between, and I don't really care. It simply illustrates the kind of automatic self-satisfaction bordering on piety that made up almost all of his conversation.

When the conversation died, murdered by the tortuous nature of Barry's anecdotes, we all retired for the night.

Very Much Delicious: Part 9

Part 9 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

Up until now we had been eating fresh food bought by Peter from the local markets and everything had been fine. Now, after our night in a 'good hotel' three of us had stomach problems in varying degrees of unpleasantness.
I ate a full English breakfast on the balcony of the restaurant but almost immediately knew that I was going to regret it. Sheila failed to show for breakfast at all, already suffering. David ate only toast and black tea, stoically ignoring his condition. Afterwards everyone apart from Sheila assembled for a walk. Immediately outside the hotel were a number of the local entrepreneurs selling carvings. Geoff picked up a table, the three legs of which were carved from a single piece of wood, the circular top being carved into a series of pictures of animals.
"This has been painted," he said "And it's spoiled it completely. You'll see the same sort of thing done much better and much cheaper later on." He put it back. The salesman seemed unperturbed by the criticism.
Further down the path two teenagers ran up and thrust a large piece of quartz into Geoff's hands. He turned it over.
"They get this from the quarry," he explained "But this piece is no good, the facets are cracked and scuffed and all of the points are blunted."
He dropped it into his pocket and went to walk away. The teenagers were outraged.
"You must pay," they cried "Three hundred kwatcha."
He feigned innocence.
"You gave it to me. A gift."
"No, no. Three hundred kwatcha."
He took it out again and frowned.
"But I didn't ask you to give it to me."
"Only to look. To see if you buy." they said.
"OK, I've looked."
He tossed it back to them and they went off in search of easier customers.
We strolled on down the hill leaving them behind. Soon we turned off the road onto a narrow path that ran alongside a river. The trees and plants hung out over the clear water in which we caught occasional glimpses of brown trout. A bright flash of scarlet darted between the trees.
"Livingstone's Lourie," said Geoff  "That bright red is only visible when they're in flight."
At a waterfall where the banks of the river opened out onto a broad expanse of flat white rocks we took a break before beginning to double back towards the hotel. A large bird of prey flashed down from the trees and skimmed the surface of the water with its talons before disappearing into the undergrowth on the far bank - but it was too fast for the bird watchers to identify. There was a palpable sense of frustration from them.
David spotted a Simonga Monkey, sitting in a tree watching us. We managed to get quite close before it was overcome with shyness and leapt from branch to branch deeper into the forest to escape our attention.
At a junction we took the opposite fork to the one we had approached by and headed past a derelict trout farm. The chain link fence had long since been appropriated by some needy farmer but a hand painted sign still proclaimed. "Trout Farm - Entrance 12 Tambala". Geoff told us that though the place had now been closed for years there was still a man employed to look after it.
Back on the main road we were approached by more teenagers with quartz. When Geoff had had the last piece in his pocket a tiny splinter had broken off. As they approached he fished it out and held it up to them.
"I sell you quartz" he said "Only one hundred and fifty kwatcha."
They looked baffled.
"No," they said "You buy quartz."
"No, no, no, no, no." he said, rolling his eyes theatrically "I already have quartz. I sell to you."
"But we already have quartz." they responded.
Geoff smiled.
"Good. Good. We all have quartz." He dropped his piece back in his pocket and walked away. The teenage salesmen stood where they were wondering what had just gone on.

Lunch was an enormous and varied open air buffet spread out on tables in the grounds of the hotel. There was turkey, chicken, beef, pork, fish, fifty different vegetables, stews, fricassees, cakes, trifles - everything that anyone could want - and I couldn't have any of it. During the morning I had been to the toilet six times. Eating anything at all was not a good idea. While the others went to the party I went to sit on the patio of my room and read a book. There seemed no sense in making myself unhappy by watching everyone else eat a good meal. When I judged that they would have finished eating I went to join them in watching the entertainment that the hotel had laid on for Christmas.
A dance troupe were there, entertaining an enormous crowd of guests, accompanied by half a dozen drummers pounding out hypnotically complex rhythms on traditional instruments. Afterwards there was a Santa Claus in the shape of a large black African in red robes with a white Ku Klux Klan style hood cut into strips at the bottom to represent a beard. He looked extremely sinister and evil and unsurprisingly the children for whom he had presents had to be dragged to him in terror.

In the late afternoon we rounded off the day by driving up to the Emperor's viewpoint and watching the sun set over the valley before returning to the hotel.

Very Much Delicious: Part 8

Part 8 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

Christmas Eve began with a repeat of yesterday's walk and as then there were lots of colourful birds and insects and butterflies but, apart from various antelope, no large game. After we had returned and had breakfast we took the boat back across the river to depart.  Already getting ready on the far bank were the two South Africans. Geoff said that he wanted to be away before them because the Unimog would churn up the roads even more badly than they had already been. The back door of the Unimog was open and I looked inside. It looked like an explosion at a rubbish dump. Boxes and bags had been thrown in randomly with their contents spilling out onto the floor. They had managed to pack less into that enormous space than Peter could get onto our roof. The younger one walked round and closed the door.
    "Look," said someone. I turned around. David was pointing off into the trees. There in a clearing about twenty yards away were a family of elephants, three adults and two young. The South Africans showed no interest in our sighting. I wondered if perhaps they had a list of 'things to see in Africa' and had already ticked of 'elephant'. We approached the group slowly. elephants have very poor eyesight and, perhaps surprisingly, even poorer hearing. If you approach carefully and from downwind it's easy to get within yards of them and it's also easy to tell when you are downwind. We had been there for about fifteen minutes before one of them finally noticed our intrusion. He became visibly agitated and the whole group moved off into the bush. Pleased with such a close sighting we went back to where we were parked.
    While we had been engrossed the South Africans had departed. Now we climbed into the Land Rover and followed, trying to avoid the deeper ruts left by their tyres. About half a mile later two things happened. First it started to rain but not with anything resembling a British downpour. It was, Barry said with some satisfaction, a real African rain. The drops were the size of walnuts and coming down like bullets from the sky, hard enough to raise bruises on sensitive skin. Second, we came to a halt, stopped by the Unimog which had broken down in the road blocking it completely. Geoff got out to assess the situation. When he returned he told us that he thought he could get round on the treacherous mudbank that led down into the waterlogged field but it would be safer if we could all get out first. Reluctantly we did so, huddling for shelter at the side of the broken down truck. Ten minutes later Geoff had accomplished the tricky manoeuvre and we were back inside, soaked and steaming, while the South Africans were behind us attempting to fix their holed Vacuum box on the brakes after some advice from Ken.
    "The trouble is they've bought it but don't know how to drive it or look after it." Geoff said. "Those repairs will hold for a while but they will have to keep re-doing them every couple of miles until they can get a welder to patch it up properly."

    Today we were to drive to Zomba and were soon on our way. Zomba was the capital city of Malawi until 1975 and the seat of Parliament as recently as 1994. The Bradt Guide describes it as 'the most immediately appealing' of Malawi's larger towns and it certainly presents a more pleasing aspect than Lilongwe.
    The buildings have a kind of faded colonial grandeur and when we parked at the PTC the street was wide, clean and pleasant in spite of the salesmen hassling us to buy their souvenirs. After a brief detour to drop off our damaged tyre we drove out of the town and up the hill towards the Zomba Plateau and the Ku Chawe Inn where we would be staying for two nights.
    The hotel is right on the edge of the plateau and has stunning views of what seems to be the whole rift valley laid out before you. Architecturally the hotel is also quite stunning being both ultra modern and deeply African. It's arched corridors and reception lead into a small bar decorated with African carvings and then open out into a restaurant and balcony that overlooks first the tiers of the hotel's gardens and beyond them the valley.
    We sat in the bar for an hour having a leisurely drink while the rooms were being prepared and then we checked in. The rooms were in keeping with the general quality of the hotel. Large and well decorated they were all fully en suite with balconies with gorgeous views and even with television.
    "Can we make a deal ?" I asked. Barry looked up from unpacking.
    "I won't turn the TV on if you don't." I said
    "I never watch television." he said humourlessly.

    We all met up again in the bar before dinner and discovered that tonight there was a special Christmas Menu. Moving to the restaurant we found a table ready for us at the end of a large and festively decorated room with a band playing traditional music at the other end and lots of people already enjoying Christmas. Pretty soon the beer and wine were flowing freely and it was a slightly drunk group of people that eventually drifted off to their rooms. It was not, I reflected, what people back home expect of me at Christmas. There was proper food in a posh hotel and not a hole in the ground in sight.

Very Much Delicious: Part 7

Part 7 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

We had entered the camp after dark so that we had little or no chance to assess it. In the pale early morning I took a stroll around. Mvuu Camp is managed by Central African Wilderness Safaris and even if all of their staff look to be in their teens it is nevertheless an attractive and professional operation. The main building which houses the bar and restaurant looks out dramatically over the river where hippo, crocodile and elephant can be watched while you sit and eat your meals or sip long cold drinks. Lizards and small mammals wander right up to the walls or climb the trees to watch you. The enclosed part of the camp has ten luxurious twin bedded tents each surrounded by sturdily constructed bamboo screens and roofs. There is a clean and modern shower and toilet block which serves both these tents and the adjacent camping site.

A map provided in the tent detailed every tree in the enclosure, describing their Latin and English names and main characteristics. The one standing immediately in front of our tent was a 'Toad Tree', presumably so named because of its warty and scabrous bark. Scraping against the trunk I discovered that it had a sticky white, unpleasant smelling sap.

I had spent much of yesterday coughing and sniffling and today it had developed into a nasty head cold with streaming eyes and a sore throat. All the same after a good breakfast I joined the others for a bush walk. Our guide was Sean who looked about seventeen and put you in mind of an Australian Lifeguard. He was accompanied by a uniformed and armed guard without whom we would not have been allowed out of the enclosure.

"Remember," said Sean, "This is not a zoo. The animals here are wild and that means that they can be dangerous. If we come across any lion or elephant there will be no danger to anyone providing you do as I tell you."

We set off. Although it was still early morning the sun was already very hot. I soon wished that I hadn't forgotten to bring my hat from the tent. At first all we found were tracks and droppings - impala, bushbuck, hippopotamus, elephant, baboon - but soon we entered a clearing to see a group of baboon running off into the trees. The ground was littered with broken shells and destroyed fruit. Sean indicated a number of holes which the baboons had clearly been digging at.

"These holes were where crocodile had laid their eggs," he told us. "The interesting thing about crocodile eggs is that the sex of the hatchling depends entirely on the temperature at which the egg was incubated. The deeper, colder eggs hatch into females and the shallower warmer ones into males. These won't be hatching into anything, the baboon have destroyed them all."

We went on. Everywhere there were brightly coloured birds, from tiny bee eaters to massive majestic fish eagles. There were also antelope of every type that we had seen so far. A fenced off enclosure had warning notices explaining that the fence carried lethal voltages and the park rangers operated a shoot to kill policy on poachers. This marked the boundary of a large area set aside for a pair of breeding black rhino which the park is keen to keep safe. They were nowhere to be seen and naturally we could not go in to look for them.

Poaching is one of the most serious problems in Malawi. Some of the reserves have been poached to the point where they no longer contain any large game at all. Liwonde has not yet reached such a sorry state but poaching is still thought of as the largest single threat to the animals. And it isn't just the animals. Around the country young trees are illegally felled by poachers who sell the wood which often ends up in the carvings sold to tourists. Technically a permit is required but few have them.

Arriving back at camp we were almost run over by a large armoured vehicle, a Unimog. This is a four wheel drive vehicle with a vengeance. It looked like it should be part of a military invasion force and was driven by two bullet headed, khaki clad men with army style crew cuts. The looked like Nazi storm troopers. The reality was more mundane. They were a South African father and son who had decided that this mode of transport was the best way to see more of Africa. At that moment they were driving round to the far side of the river, where we were parked, to allow them and early start tomorrow.

In the afternoon we took a boat ride down the river. This gave us a chance to observe more closely the hippopotamus and crocodile. Osman, our new guide, proved to be exceptional at identifying birds from a single glimpse of their plumage or a few seconds of their song. As we moved down the river he told us an African folk tale of 'Why The hippo Yawns'.

We continued downstream until the sun started to set and then Osman killed the engine and let us drift there in silence watching as the sky turned first red then a glorious gold as the afterglow lit up the clouds from below the horizon. Now that it was dark we sailed back up river with Osman picking out details on the banks with a powerful spotlight

hippo lumbered up the muddy shores, ungainly certainly but with an air of massive unstopability.

crocodile slithered from the beam as soon as it touched them to glide silently across the water, just below the surface.

A tree full of heron remained motionless while the light was upon them and took to the air as one when he flicked it away for a moment.

A malachite kingfisher with its spectacular plumage was pinned to a branch by the lamp, so hypnotised that we could get within feet of it for close up photographs.

The bright tunnel of the beam was filled with a million flying insects, their motion forming strange stroboscopic geometries as their wings flickered in the light.

All too soon it was over and we were back at camp. After another of Peter's excellent meals I decided that rather than go to the bar I would take an early night and try to sleep off the remainder of my cold.

Very Much Delicious: Part 6

Part 6 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts was explained in Part 5.

* 

In the bright early morning sunshine that had replaced yesterday's intermittently heavy rain we were all setting off for another day of travel that would hopefully end at the Liwonde Reserve.

We drove out through Chintheche. Geoff gave us a thirty second tour of the highlights

- the police station which because it had no phone and no car required you to drive there to report a crime then give the policeman a lift back to the scene

- the open walled courtroom where justice could not only be done but be seen to be done by anyone walking past in the street

- the street traders beginning to lay out their goods on the rickety wooden stalls.

And it was so small that, with no more description, we were through it. Chintheche was behind us and we were on the open road that parallels the lake shore. As we drove south a light rain started to fall which got progressively heavier as the weather reminded us that this was technically a few weeks into the start of the wet season. Suddenly the back of the Land Rover lurched sharply towards the ditch at the side of the road. Geoff pulled over and got out to take a look. The nearside trailer tyre was shredded. Fifteen minutes later we had changed it for the spare and were once more on the move even if we were a bit wetter than we had been. Geoff kept glancing nervously at the cloud laden sky that was ahead of us and even Peter seemed a touch apprehensive.

"With this rain we might not be able to get into Liwonde." Geoff explained "The main entrance was bad two weeks ago and they've probably closed it by now. We'll have to make for the other entrance at Mangochi."

We carried on driving, heading first towards Lilongwe. As we approached there was a hand painted sign by the side of the road.

"ROAD CLOSED AT PENGA PENGA"

"Peter ?" Geoff called over his shoulder. Peter, who had been deep in conversation with David and Louise, looked up.

"Where the hell is Penga Penga ?"

Peter didn't know so we carried on hoping to get more information at a garage further down the road.  The petrol station was laid out on a design we had already seen a dozen times but this one had something the others were missing. This one had 'Twong Twong'. While Geoff filled up and enquired about the roads 'Twong Twong' entertained us. He was a local man with a facial deformity of a type very common in much of Africa, caused by Noma, a horrible disease that could be treated relatively easy if caught early enough but is frequently left untreated in Africa.

No-one seemed to know Twong Twong's real name. He sat on a stool by the door plucking on a home made three stringed guitar and singing in a clear high pitched voice. He was into his third song by the time Geoff came back. It wasn't particularly good news.

"We were already heading for the Mangochi entrance, " he said but one of the bridges on the main road has been washed away. The Land Rover might get through but it might not and there is an alternate route we can take that might be better. All the same the roads into the Reserve might be washed out at that entrance too. Still it's better that than the other choice which is to press on to Zomba and try to get accommodation there, missing out Liwonde altogether. We'll try the alternate route and see how it goes.

We left the garage and drove on. By now the weather had deteriorated very badly. Rain was lashing down and visibility was down to a few yards. We turned off the tarmacced road onto a dirt track signposted 'Mua Mission' and a few hundred slippery uphill yards later stopped in the middle of a group of buildings seen only indistinctly through the wet windows.

The Mua Mission was founded in 1899. It lies just off the main Salima to Balaka road and was the first Roman Catholic Mission in Malawi. It is a large and impressive complex of buildings. Besides the mission itself there is a hospital and a school and a folklore museum. David Stuart describes it in 'A Guide to Malawi'.

'What makes it a special place of pilgrimage for tourists is the extraordinary size, quality and vitality of the woodcarvings that are produced by the trainees at the mission. Father Boucher, whose self-depracating genius is behind this enterprise, has succeeded in bringing out the natural, innate, talents of his students to produce products of unique fascination and beauty. There is little indication of any foreign values and design concepts introduced to his charges.'

The Mission is also a popular stopping off place for other reasons. There are a series of extraordinary tall circular structures which have built in circular tables and benches and high thatched conical roofs. These can be used to eat lunch when the weather is bad - and at that moment it was terrible. In the hundred yard dash from vehicle to shelter we had all got soaked, but once inside with bottles of beer and all the things necessary for a fine lunch of assorted sandwiches, fruit and vegetables we all felt that the rain didn't matter very much. Gradually, as we ate, there was a lightening of the sky and a thinning of the rain until it was only a heavy drizzle. We decided to take a look at the souvenir shop and those famous carvings. The shop was a single large circular room piled from floor to ceiling with carvings ranging from tiny intricate animals to enormous representations of the last supper and the crucifixion. All of them were of stunning quality and while pricey by Malawi standards dirt cheap by ours. I settled on two ebony daggers with hilts in the shape of a heron and an owl.

Back on the road we found ourselves driving along a cratered track and had gone only a few miles before another puncture forced us to stop again. The rain, with its usual impeccable timing chose that moment to start again in earnest and by the time we were underway again we were quite thoroughly soaked. The dirt road continued for what felt like forever before we turned back onto a properly surfaced one. From here the going was quite good almost right into Mangochi. It was however a false sense of security. At Mangochi the heavy rain had caused several small rivers to burst their banks and the whole town was under several inches of water.

This road led through several villages of thatched mud and brick huts. The fires inside them were causing the soaking wet roofs to steam vigorously and they looked strange and alien in the gathering twilight. By now the road was no more than mud and only Geoff's driving kept us moving in more or less the right direction. At one point the track disappeared altogether under a torrent of dirty water perhaps twenty yards wide.

"Somewhere under that lot there's a wooden bridge that we have to cross." said Geoff without optimism. Barry and Peter both got out and waded through the deluge to find it and, aided by a couple of locals, successfully led us across.

It was not much further to the Liwonde Camp gate and five minutes after that we were at the Shire River. Approaching the park from this side you arrive on the wrong bank. There is a red flag that you have to raise to attract the attention of the lodge on the opposite shore. When they notice it they send a boat to collect you. We raised the flag but it was quickly apparent that it was already too dark for them to see us. Geoff climbed back into the Land Rover and started to flash the lights out across the water. Briefly they illuminated the sign on the landing stage.

"Please Respect The Crocodiles."

Soon two dark shapes detached themselves from the far bank and came towards us. They were the boats and ten minutes later we were standing in the Mvuu Lodge ordering beer and asking about dinner.

It had been a long day.

Very Much Delicious: Part 5

Part 5 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts is explained below.

* 

Next day, after a breakfast of pancakes and honey, we set out for Nkata Bay. It was to be a day of travelling, albeit broken up with a number of stops. The first of these was half a mile down the road from the Reserve at a tiny village where, after asking the owners permission, we had a look around one of the small farms.
"Good Morning, how are you today ?" Sheila asked a man who appeared to be in charge. He thought about it for a minute and then smiled.
"Thank you." he said "I am very much delicious. How are you."
Sheila replied, as solemnly as she could manage.
"I am also very much delicious."
It became a catch-phrase for the trip. Everyone would always answer questions about how they liked things or how they felt with 'Very much delicious."
The farm was small but the family living on it was enormous. There were about half a dozen adults and twice as many children - a number rapidly supplemented by hordes from neighbouring farms. Soon we were surrounded by barefoot children in grubby T-shirts. It consisted of three buildings, one for living in, one for storage and for the animals and a ramshackle frame-like structure for drying the cassava crop. The house was small but quite sturdy with brick walls covered in baked mud, wooden framed and shuttered windows and a thatched roof. The family were friendly and mostly happy to let us look around and take photographs. One of the neighbours asked Barry to photograph his two children but as soon as the camera was pointed they ran away screaming.
Our second stop was in Mzuzu, where we had stopped for supplies a couple of days ago. I bought some tapes of Malawian Music from a market stall. The fact that they were all likely to be religious music was readily determined from the names of the bands and the sleeve illustrations.For example the Alleluya Band perform Exultet Konwerani on a tape with a cover showing five people with their arms raised to a haloed face in the sky. I questioned Peter about it as we sat in the back of the Land Rover. It seems that there is almost no tradition of secular music in Malawi with virtually all the popular music being of a religious nature. He translated the song titles for me and these more or less confirmed the observation. Perhaps more surprising was the difficulty of some of the translations. Either Peter was being over meticulous or Chichewa is the most concise language in the history of linguistics. For example I pointed to a single word title. This turned out to be one of the few that were not overtly religious. Peter thought about it for a long time before answering.
"Sometimes," he said "When the men of the village should be planting their crops they go instead into the town where they sit with their friends and drink Chibuka. They may stay away from home for a very long time. When they go home their wives are not pleased with them and this " - he pointed at the word - "Is what they would say."
Another title, two words this time, resulted in a lengthy description of the Crucifixion and finished with "this means the emotion felt by the onlookers at Calvary."
In between these language lessons I quizzed him about local politics. Things in Malawi are, he told me, pretty good nowadays. There is free (and theoretically universal) primary school education, although books and uniforms must be paid for. There is free state health care at the hospitals although there are still many private clinics - often run by religious orders - which charge fees. The country is predominantly Christian but with a substantial Moslem minority that is more prevalent in the south. He seemed surprised at my question as to whether this side by side existence caused any friction in the community, as if such a concept had never occurred to him.
Our next stop was Nkata Bay. This is a town with a bad reputation which is much frequented by back packers. As such the inhabitants have developed a different attitude. There is a lot of begging and a lot of people trying to rip-off the foreigners with over priced inferior souvenirs. I found the place to be unattractive although interesting for the brief time that we were actually there. We spent a few minutes in one of the many drinking houses that lined the main road. These are large unfurnished rooms with a bar selling cardboard cartons of Chibuka. They are filled to overflowing, even in the afternoon, with drunken Malawian men drinking, singing and dancing. We tasted the Chibuka which was like a thin brown sour alcoholic porridge. I cannot imagine that if I lived in Africa for a thousand years I could ever come to like it although the locals seemed to love the stuff.
A little further up the road we stopped again to look at a rubber plantation and stretch our legs. The rubber trees were tall and straight with almost no low level branches. They were planted in geometrically neat rows and each one had a small cup affixed below a V shaped cut in the bark into which the thick white sap was draining.
We finally reached our overnight stop in the late afternoon. This was the Katoto Beach Hotel at Chintheche. The hotel, right on the shore of the lake is in a prime position. The lake and lake shore are very beautiful and the water supposedly free of the Bilharzia which makes the southern section so dangerous to swim in. Unfortunately the place is being allowed to fall into disrepair with lights that do not work, bare wires hanging from ceilings, piles of rubble from abandoned building projects and a general air that no one cares any more about what must once have been a very good hotel. It would require so little work to return it to a good hotel that it seemed sad that no one could be bothered.

Very Much Delicious: Part 4

Here is part 4 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts will, I promise, be explained eventually.

*

A combination of large amounts of alcohol and ears stuffed with cotton wool had failed to overcome the volume of Barry's snoring which was marginally louder than the noise made by the hippopotamus. So when everyone else went for a morning walk around the lake I went back to bed for three hours essential sleep. When I got up Peter was busily setting breakfast on a long wooden table. I sat drinking tea and chatting to him as he worked. He had, he told me, a wife and four children in the north at Nyika where he owned a farm. He had previously worked for one of the national parks but had been poached by the tour company. They had trained him as a cook and he was currently working towards becoming a tour leader. The job had given him a chance to travel not only within Malawi but also into other African countries - Zambia and Zimbabwe. He was cheerful and enthusiastic. In the three weeks that we were there he never stopped smiling and was as full of bounce changing a tyre in the rain as he was preparing breakfast over an open fire.

    Everyone returned at about eight thirty and after breakfast spent the rest of the morning doing nothing. I sat listening to music and intermittently reading. Sheila asked me to investigate a 'big spider' that was occupying their tent's toilet. I investigated and found that while it was unquestionably big and spider-like it was actually only a harmless cricket. Nevertheless I collected it from the wall and released it outside into the grass.

Even though we were resting there were still plenty of opportunities for wildlife viewing, albeit on a smaller scale than most people think of when you talk about Safaris.

In the tree outside our tent a bushbaby clambered about trying, or so it seemed, to evade our efforts at photographing him.

Two birds spent such a long time tumbling after each other that even I, with the aid of one of Barry's bird books, managed to identify them as Huegelin's robin.

Buzzing persistently around the tent was a particularly large and annoying wasp.

    In the afternoon we went for another drive. There is only one road through the park so that it was the same route that we had taken yesterday. As we drove under the trees a greyish green adder-like snake was twined around the dead branches at the top of one, too far away for a positive identification.. It slithered away harmlessly at our approach. Several times we sighted antelope, usually the gazelle like bushbuck but also reedbuck and roan and a single distant view of the much larger kudu.

    Our drive back in the dark produced only frogs and birds frozen in the beam of our headlamps and occasionally a fleeting glimpse of small mammals that Geoff would identify as 'four toed elephant shrew' or 'slender mongoose' but which were always too quick for less experienced eyes to identify.

    Back at camp Peter had acceded to our request and prepared us a traditional Malawian meal. The staple of this diet is a thick maize porridge called nsima. This has the consistency of thick and glutinous mashed potato and the taste of wallpaper paste. Alone it is extremely hard to swallow and harder to digest. However if you mash salt into it and then dip it into a flavoured sauce (the one provided being made chiefly from onions) it is relatively palatable and undeniably filling.

    Afterwards most people went back to their tents. I sat for a further half an hour with another beer listening to Geoff and one of the local head men chattering away in Tambuka. Even though I couldn't understand a word it was clear that there was a genuine rapport between them as they traded good natured banter. Eventually I downed the last of my drink and went to bed.

Very Much Delicious: Part 3

Here is part 3 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts will, I promise, be explained eventually.

*

Away on the distant slope across the valley a group of lights marked a town, probably Rumphi. As dawn lightened the sky, they became less prominent, disappearing against the green backdrop of the trees. It was a little after four a.m., it was raining, and I was sitting in my track suit on the wooden table sheltered by the veranda, with my arms wrapped around my knees, watching and listening to Africa waking up. Dozens of bird calls, alien and unfamiliar, pierced the dawn. There was a deep caw-caw-cawwww from somewhere to my left. Another canary like cadence called out 'quick-they're-coming - quick-they're coming'. A group of birds did staccato machine gun impressions in a stand of brachystegia just down the hill.

A group of crickets, large enough to be individually visible even a hundred yards away, took to the air in a flashing cloud of scarlet, their humming underpinning the sharper calls of the birds.

Of course I was out here this early for a reason. My room mate had proven to be another snorer and the echoes of his nasal gymnastics had prevented my sleeping for most of the night. Out here, amid all this noise it was far more relaxing and peaceful. When I found myself dozing I went back inside, stretched out on the sofa in front of the last embers of the fire and fell asleep.

Next time I awoke breakfast was ready and a magnificent feast it was too, bacon, eggs, great fat home made sausages, thick sliced toast made from freshly baked bread, a sweet thick honey and gallons of delicious Malawi coffee. Afterwards, once we had showered and dressed, we piled back into the Land Rover and drove down to Mzuzu where, while Peter went shopping we looked around the PTC supermarket and the town market. Mzuzu is the capital of the Northern Province and has existed as a town for less than fifty years, being a city only since 1991. We stayed only about thirty minutes before moving on.

At the gate of Vwaza Marsh Game Reserve is a large sign that says

"REMEMBER ELEPHANTS HAVE RIGHT OF WAY !"

It is a thousand square kilometre reserve that runs along the northern section of the Zambian border. The accommodation there is in 'fixed' tents. These are tents that have been pitched onto concrete bases with four wooden poles supporting thatched roofs above them. They are basically but adequately furnished with beds, chairs and a table. The Reserve itself is flat with predominantly brachystegia woodland and, as the name would suggest, substantial wetland habitat. From the tents we could look out across a perfect African vista towards the river, and best of all apart from a few staff we had the place completely to ourselves.

After a brief lunch it was time for our first game drive. As was to become the pattern for the drives we piled mattresses onto the roof of the Land Rover and sat up there, legs dangling over the sides, while Geoff drove us along the dusty dirt roads. Others in the party kept on spotting birds and calling out their names but I found that inevitably by the time I had got my binoculars trained and focused they had already flown away.

In the distance Sarah picked out about a dozen roan antelope. Geoff drove of the road and out through the bush to try to get a closer view, eventually halting on the plain near an enormous dead termite mound. These mounds are one of the startling features of the country's landscape. Some of them are yards high and thousands of years old. Many have trees growing from them, sometimes ancient and gnarled trees which nonetheless the mounds pre-date. We climbed down from the roof and started to follow the roan tracks which were clear and fresh in the soft ground. We found where they had been recently - their fresh droppings were already being parcelled up and rolled away by a horde of bright green dung beetles - but the roan themselves had gone. Reluctantly we went back to the vehicle.

By now sunset was approaching and we drove down towards the river. Across the mud flats there were several dozen hippo in the water. Their booming voices, sounding like someone laughing at the world's dirtiest joke, rang out across the valley. We approached them on foot and with great caution - hippopotamus are responsible for more deaths in Africa than either crocodile or lion. When we had got close enough to satisfy our urge for photographs we turned around and headed back to where we had parked. By the time we reached it the sun was half way down past the horizon and we sat around on the grass drinking bottles of beer and watching the almost archetypal African landscape. It was a wonderful moment that would nevertheless be surpassed over and over by ever more beautiful vistas.

Very Much Delicious: Part 2

I have been shockingly lax recently when it comes to posting things here on the subject that the blog was, originally, ostensibly about : travel.

Here then is part 2 of my diaries from 1996 about my trip to Malawi and Zambia. And, by the way, the title of these posts will, I promise, be explained eventually.

*

I woke early and took my camera for another walk around the area. It proved to be distinctly unphotogenic and after a couple of 'atmospheric' shots I gave up and returned to the hotel. In the grounds of the Golden Cockroach as someone had dubbed our accommodation, was a Korean restaurant - at least that's what it was called but there was nothing noticeably Korean about it. Nor for that matter noticeably Malawian. It was in a building leased from the Hotel but otherwise separate from it. Here we had breakfast, sitting at a table outside eating a plate of bananas, mangoes and fried eggs - a combination a good deal more appetising than it sounds. Barry had a Newman's Guide to the Birds of Southern Africa and at the sight of something colourful in one of the trees quickly consulted it to pronounce 'Redbilled Woodhoopoe' and again a minute later to identify a 'Cutthroat Finch'. 

I groaned inwardly at the prospect of another trip shared with a bird-watcher.

After breakfast the Land Rover arrived with our driver and our cook. The cook, Peter, was a cheerful smiling fellow who clambered on top of the Land Rover and within minutes had all our waiting baggage stowed away under a plastic sheet which was firmly roped down to the roof. Soon we were under way, driving out through the flame trees and coral trees of suburban Lilongwe on our way to Kasito Lodge, our overnight stop for Wednesday.

The Malawi Forestry Department has around the country various lodges for guests. The ones in the Viphya Forest Reserve are called Kasito Lodges One and Two. As you climb towards the Viphya plateau from Mzimba the variegated colours of the brachystegia woodland are replaced by the darker greens of imported Mexican Pine with only smaller patches of indigenous trees remaining. Turning off the main road we approached Kasito Lodge Number One along a succession of sandy tracks. When I had read that we were to be in 'lodge accommodation' I had been a little apprehensive. After all that bland phrase could have meant almost anything. Kasito Lodge exceeded my wildest expectations. It is a sprawling former colonial residence which has magnificent views across the valley. It has half a dozen large bedrooms, a dining room, a large lounge with a wide and welcoming fireplace, extensive kitchens and two bathrooms and a shower. All of it is well maintained and comfortable and we had it all to ourselves.

The grey morning had given way to a glorious afternoon and most of us decided to go for a walk around the hills. Only Barry, who wanted to go walking alone, decided against the idea. The guide, wisely not trusting our sense of direction, suggested that one of the lodge employees should come with us to make sure that we did not get lost. Verten, a thin Malawian in dark blue overalls, led us up the hill through the trees. He was aged 30 and had 3 children but his English was not as good as Peter's and that was all I managed to find out about him before we cleared the trees and arrived at a large open space where a number of charcoal kilns could be found. They occupied a flat area at the top of the hill a little way short of the road. They were also conspicuously not working. While the five of us looked around Verten disappeared, re-appearing a few minutes later with Dervan, a former worker at the site whose English was considerably better. The charcoal kilns had, he explained been closed two years ago by the government but he would happily give us a tour anyway if we wanted one. We all agreed that we did.

There were two types of kiln there, hemispherical one ton kilns and cylindrical three ton kilns. They were all ingeniously constructed using a hinged template with two sliding pieces of wood and a hinged peg. This allowed them to create the circular shapes easily and accurately. The rows of the smaller version were built of diminishing sizes of brick to more easily obtain the correct shape. Once built, complete with a number of air vents and a door for loading they were packed tightly with pine logs and then the door was sealed up. The wood was then ignited via channels in the base and allowed to burn for three hours. The vents were then also sealed to starve the fire of oxygen and the outside of the kiln covered in mud to facilitate cooling. The larger kilns also had run off channels so that the creosote that is released when pine burns could be collected and sold.

He had mixed feelings about the closure. On the one hand he was unhappy to be out of a job when he had a wife and family to support, on the other hand it was an unpleasant and difficult job which he had never liked anyway.

The path led in a rough circle away from the lodge. Verten was guiding us and occasionally Sarah would ask him the name of one of the flowers but as he only ever knew the name in his own language, Tambuka, and invariably picked the flower to give to her she soon stopped bothering. The path continued to bend so that eventually it must lead roughly back towards our Lodge. At one point the ground was covered in hundreds of jet black millipedes emerging from tiny holes in the dirt. At our footfalls some retreated into the holes, others ignored us completely and others curled up into tight spirals, as hard as sea shells. Eventually we dipped down a slight slope and crossed a narrow stream. On the other side we climbed briefly and found ourselves approaching our point of departure.

As we approached another Lodge employee came bustling out with a large pot of tea and a plate of biscuits and we sat at a wooden table on the lawn eating and drinking. A tiny frog, no more than a centimetre long and with bright red feet hopped around in the grass and then posed for photographs before leaving us.

Dinner, the first of many to be cooked for us by Peter was a thick and tasty vegetable soup followed by a gigantic helping of shepherds' pie. It was excellent and afterwards we sat with our drinks in front of a blazing log fire and introduced ourselves 'officially.'

Geoff, the Safari leader, was a former South African lawyer who had decided that the city life was not for him and that this would suit him better. He and his wife had been on their way to visit Kenya when they decided to settle instead on the shore of Lake Malawi.

David and Louise were together. They were both vegetarians and both did some kind of work connected with ecology, the kind of people that can say 'minimum impact tourism' and 'ecologically responsible resource management' with a straight face.

Barry, my room mate, was a lifelong fan of Africa and had travelled in almost every bit of there is to travel in. He was certainly knowledgeable but he had a self-aggrandising attitude that I did not take to. His heart was in the right place but he was rather too smug and pompous for me to find him particularly likable.

Sheila was a teaching sister from an Edinburgh hospital and was about sixty years old. She had taught a number of African students who had gone on to return to their own countries to practise, including some to Malawi.

Sarah, a business analyst, was a thirty-something widow, also from Edinburgh.

And, of course, there was me, a thirty-something systems analyst working for a police authority who likes to travel to as many different places as possible and meet as many different people as possible to which end this was my first visit to Africa apart from a thoroughly unenjoyable week spent in Tunisia some years earlier.

We ate and introduced ourselves and sat in the cooling air of an African evening and everyone agreed that it looked like being a splendid trip.

Very Much Delicious: Part 1

I have been shockingly lax recently when it comes to posting things here on the subject that the blog was, originally, ostensibly about : travel.

So I've decided that it's time to dust down another of my old travelogues and present it, in sections, for your entertainment. In this, and subsequent, entries, names have been changed but everything else is completely factual.
The meaning of the title for these entries will become clear later.

It's hard to believe that it's only fourteen years since I went on a package holiday in Malawi and Zambia. It feels like it was much longer than that. Still, that's what the dates on the diary say so I suppose it must be true. The first diary entry for the trip is dated 17th December 1996 and I had just arrived in Malawi.

*

After the dusty downbeat shabbiness of our stopover at Addis Ababa, Lilongwe airport was a haven of calm and tranquillity. It was cool spacious and pleasant. It hardly felt like an airport at all. Our tour leader, Geoff, was waiting for us. Dressed in a jungle green short sleeved shirt and shorts he looked every inch the great white hunter. When he spoke to introduce himself his English had the distinctive sound of a South African. He introduced himself and immediately gained our unending affection by handing out cold beers from back of the Land Rover.
    Outside the airport the day was bright and hot, the air sticky and humid. The airport looked as good from there as from inside, occupying a broad tree lined avenue rather than the usual acres of car filled concrete. We stood around drinking the beer and helping load our luggage onto the roof of the vehicle. There were only six of us. David was a tall thin man with greying hair and a beard. He was there with Louise. Both of them were difficult to place in an age bracket but were probably in their fifties. Barry, who I correctly surmised was to be my room mate was shorter, solidly built and beginning to lose his hair. He was also about the same age. Of the two single women one, Sheila was older - perhaps about sixty - and the other Sarah was younger - probably late thirties.
    After a short drive we arrived at lodging for the night, a relatively shabby resthouse. It had, we were assured, been newly decorated and improved shortly before our arrival. It must have been an interesting place before. The beds were hard and not especially clean. The toilet and shower could best be described as 'basic with an overpowering smell of urine'. The corridors were filled with broken and discarded furniture.
We asked at reception for mosquito nets.
    "No mosquito nets, no mosquitoes." the owner said swatting away the mosquito feeding on his cheek. Back in the room I dug out my own net and set it up. I tried to talk to my room mate. He was a seasoned hand at Africa having visited most of it in the last twenty years or so. He seemed basically decent but a little pompous and self righteous - a 'been there, done that, sponsored the new wing of the orphanage' sort of a guy. Ten minutes in his company and you felt guilty for not selling all of your possessions and donating the proceeds to Somalian refugees. I gave up trying to hold a conversation and went to take a shower.
    A little later, clean and changed and feeling refreshed I went for a walk around the immediate environs. The sounds were different to anywhere I had ever been. My stroll led me down a dusty road, past a school and into what seemed to be a half built shopping area. All the way I was accompanied by the noise of insects and frogs in a perpetually shifting rhythm, magnified by the stillness of the air and sometimes accompanied by the distant wail of an Islamic call to prayer.

    A child sitting in a pile of truck tyres waved at me and I waved back. A man was crouched by the side of the road repairing a bicycle even though it was already becoming dark. A notice proclaimed that the Lilongwe Sewage Recycling Project was co-funded by Japan. This last was the first indication of a theme to be noticed time and again in the country. Everywhere were signs of Japanese investment from the many co-funded projects to the enormous number of Toyota Land Cruisers. Soon it became too dark to sensibly continue and I returned to the hotel ready for my evening meal. This was to be taken at the local golf club.
    The golf club  restaurant was run by an ex-patriot Englishman. He was a fussy host in a maroon shirt who had much to say on the subject of African economics and how the hurdles put in the way of starting businesses made small investment difficult. All the same, he pointed out, there was building and development going on everywhere and that was a sure sign of healthy economic growth. He talked while we ate, keeping up a constant stream of the type of conversation that is probably the staple of every golf club in the world. Outside the sights and sounds of the country might have seemed different but inside, if the conversation could be taken as a guide, we might as well have been in Surrey.

    Of course, the combination of my lack of interest in Malawian business ordeals and my tiredness from the flight guaranteed that I would remember nothing of the meal tomorrow – not even what I had eaten – so his words were largely wasted. They simply made a droning backdrop to the evening as we all focussed on the idea that we could soon go to sleep and be ready for the first proper day of the trip.