South of Malawi: Blantyre

After we left Mushroom Farm, we did two transit days to get ourselves to Blantyre.  The first day was spent hiking down the Great Rift Escarpment to the tarmac road where we caught a surprisingly comfortable minibus to Mzuzu.  In Mzuzu, we picked up food from the store, renewed my sister’s visa, and got our bus tickets to Blantyre the next day.  We stayed at a hostel run by a South Korean woman and her American husband and ate amazing Korean food while there.

The next day we took 12 hour bus ride from Mzuzu to Blantyre.  We left at 7am sharp (there were a few people we saw trying to get the bus to stop.  Because they were late, the bus did not stop for them.  Amazing for public transport in Malawi!), got two drinks, some snacks, and had an hour break in Lilongwe.  The bus ride went well except for the driver barreling down the middle of the road.  This would not have been bad had I not sat in the front of the bus.  The other issue was the deafening music videos played over the buses TV for about 9 hours.  I watched current hip hop and R&B and really poorly produced Malawian music videos.  It became a problem when the videos went on repeat after about an hour.

Once in Blantyre, we taxied to our hostel because it had just got dark, had dinner, and went to bed.  It is exhausting to travel for such a long time even though I did absolutely nothing all day.  The next day was Malawian Independence Day (July 6) but we didn’t see any festivities, parades, or fireworks.  The plan was to transit to the Mt. Mulanje area the next day so we could run a porter’s race and do a three day trek up the mountain.  To do this, we needed to shop for food, wash our clothes, and prepare ourselves for the next week of travel.  We did this, walked around the city, and I even applied for a nursing job back in the States.  It was a nice quiet day and interesting to see another Malawian city.

Blantyre is the commercial capital of Malawi and the largest city.  It is very hilly and crowded.  I didn’t like it as much as Mzuzu or Lilongwe (the other two major Malawian cities) but this is because there isn’t much to do there.  My hope was to participate in some Independence Day celebrations or do some interesting tourist sites but I wouldn’t find any.  I was able to visit the oldest building in Malawi (it is a tourist shop/restaurant now) and a historic church but other that this, found not very much to do.  While I was disappointed about the lack of activities, Blantyre was meant as a rest day and it served its purpose because the next week was spent running, hiking, and being active.

Tribal masks we saw at the oldest building in Malawi

Historic church in Blantyre

My sister Karyn petting a girraffe

Me with a zebra

The North of Malawi: Nyika National Park

The other big activity we did near Livingstonia was to hike from Mushroom Farm to Chelinda Camp in Nyika NP and back over five days.  We hired a local guide, Paul, who is a park ranger in Nyika, and these five days were some of the best I had in Malawi.

On the day we got to Mushroom Farm, Paul was waiting there for us to finalize our trip and agree on a price for his guiding services.  My goal was to do this hike in 5 days but Paul was hesitant to agree to this because it takes 6 days to do normally.  After come conversation, we agreed to the hike, his fee, and a goal of 5 days if he felt we could do it.  The next day he came to the Farm and we left (after a massive 15 minute downpour).  We walked into Livingstonia where Paul got his supplies, stopped by his house for him to get his trekking equipment and gun, and through many villages.  This first day was on dirt roads and we walked straight up, over, and down the hills.  It was a fascinating day because we got a great tour of rural Malawi.  Paul saw people he knew, we saw villagers building a structure to be used by all, we crossed makeshift wooden bridges over rivers, and camped for the night at a coffee processing center.

At camp, we met a man hiking from Nyika NP to Livingstonia.  He booked this trip two years ago, flew from Lilongwe to the NP, and then did a fully guided trip.  He had a guide, cook, ranger, server, and 3 porters to carry his and all of the expeditions stuff.  We were stunned by this because we were paying $15/day for Paul and provided all our own gear and food.  This man, Chris, must have paid at least $1000 for the flight and trek.  A ludicrous amount of money for a dirt cheap adventurer like me.

This first day was pretty easy because it was slow and on easy roads but the next three days would be much more difficult.  The second day began by walking through fields of bananas and coffee and then up steep paths to get into the park.  Nyika is a plateau at about 7700 feet.  We started our hike at about 3700 feet in Livingstonia and camped the first night at about 4700 feet.  Today, we gained the rest of the altitude and would be on the plateau before lunch.

We hiked straight up the hills again and as we got higher up, the weather changed to be very misty, drizzly, and cooler (think Seattle weather).  This continued until we were on the plateau where the weather was cool and wet but midday it would turn cool and sunny.  The plateau reminded me of the rolling hills of the Channel Island off of southern California.  There were small areas covered in oak but otherwise there were short grasses covering the land.  The trail changed also and was the width of a foot.  This was frustrating to me because I had to walk like a supermodel on a catwalk to not wreck my shoes and not walk on the sides of the trail.  It was also awkward because the grasses were long enough to obscure the trail so you never quite knew where the trail was.

We ate lunch at the spot where people normally spend night two, so we continued on and camped in a gully in the middle of one of the oak thickets (see picture below).  The third day was spent walking to Chelinda Camp and seeing antelope and zebra in the grasslands around the camp.  They ran off before you could get close but it was amazing to see African animals again.  We walked around the camp and then headed back to our campsite.  The next two days were spent getting back to Livingstonia and Paul took us on a tour of the town as we walked through it.  This trek up to Nyika NP was really one of the best parts of my trip in Malawi because I got to hike, see rural Malawi, experience a place not many people go to, and get out into nature.

After we got back to Mushroom Farm, we spent the next day there and then headed off to the south of Malawi for the rest of our time there.

Ground cassava laid out to dry

Camping at the coffee processing plant

Walking on the Nyika Plateau

Our "hidden" campsite

Me posing with Paul's gun how he normally carried it 

Entering the fog 

Up on the plateau

Nyika Plateau

Chelinda Camp:  where the rich people stay

Picture looking out to Lake Malawi (Paul our guide on the right)

Paul walking through the fields

Tobacco leaves drying

Me and Paul walking the road

Coffee bean drying racks

Me and Paul

Chelinda Camp

Fog and the hills we climbed up

Millet plant

The North of Malawi: Livingstonia

From Nkata Bay, my sister and I got ourselves to Mzuzu via a shared taxi and then to Chitimba via a minibus.  Our goal for this day’s travels was an eco-lodge called Mushroom Farm high on the Livingstonia Escarpment.  To get the Mushroom Farm, you have to walk or drive about 15km and 700m of elevation gain to get there.  We decided to walk up with our backpacks.  The first third of the walk was hot, sunny, and without shade, and starting the hike at 1pm didn’t help.  The second third of the hike is very steep with about a dozen hairpin turns to go up.  This is why the hike takes 2-3 hours or 1 hour in a car.  It is steep, curvy, and a badly maintained road.  The last third is reasonable but I was tired and it seemed very long.  Karyn was very nice and walked the whole way with two sisters we met in Nkata Bay.  They were slow and badly unprepared as they weren’t wearing socks, had short jean shorts on, minimal sun protection, and no jacket (it gets cold at night).

Mushroom Farm and Livingstonia is neat because mainly because of the natural beauty but also for the history.  It is one of the few places in Africa we visited that has some historical things you can visit.  Mushroom Farm sits right at the edge of the escarpment and you can look down 700m to the ground below and look out and see Lake Malawi and even Tanzania on the other side of the lake.  The area around Mushroom Farm is very jungle like with lots of vegetation and spiders, and we actually got a downpour of rain on morning for about 15 minutes.  It’s an eco-lodge in a beautiful place.

Livingstonia is named after David Livingstone and was, and still is, an important mission site of the CCAP (Church of Central Africa Presbyterian).  Dr. Livingstone died before he was able to start his mission, and a few years and tries later, the group he was doing this will founded Livingstonia (named after him) and the mission.  For this reason, there is a very nice stone 100+ year old church, a university, technical college, and secondary and primary school.  The missionaries began all these institutions and they are active today.  The missionaries have been so influential that when Malawi gained its independence from the UK in the 1950’s, most of the leaders were educated at one point in Livingstonia.  

The town is surprisingly small considering the historical, cultural, and educational significance of it.  With it being small, it is easy to navigate and tour the church, small museum, university, market, and stone cairn marking one of the first deaths of the mission.  The town is about 10 km from Mushroom Farm and an easier hike to get there.

Between the Farm and town, there is a 125m waterfall which is one of the largest in Malawi.  It was so unexpected to see it because while the escarpment is lush and green, there isn’t much running water on the ground.  I also found out that the slave trade use to be big in the area in the 1700 and 1800’s and local would hide behind the waterfall to escape the slavers.

Karyn and I spend a one full day here and two partial days but the big reason for the trip was to do a five-day trek to Malawi’s first national Park, Nyika NP.  I’ll talk about that part of the trip in the next post.

We camped at Mushroom Farm and this was the view!

Celebration after reaching the Farm 

In and around Livingstonia, there were they beautiful houses that had plants growing on them.

Church in Livingstonia

Church in Livingstonia

Idea of the vegetation and how well kept things are in Africa

Stone cairn

Reason for stone cairn.  There are lots of these "some camped here" monuments....random.

Waterfall

Karyn hiding from slavers

View of Lake Malawi from the top of the escarpment

I thought this house was so beautiful but the kids would not let me take a photo without people

View for Livingtonia towards the lake

One of my favorite things of Malawi is the poinsettia bushes.  They are so neat.

Pastime of all Malawians is pool.  There are pool table in nearly all town markets.

The North of Malawi: Nkata Bay

Karyn and I met up on a Friday morning, and after some hassle of getting the rental car (another post will talk about driving in Malawi), I went to pick her up at her hostel across town.  We spent the day at the chitenge market (a chitenge is a 2 meter by 1 meter cloth that women wear over their clothes like a skirt, use to carry children on their back, use to carry things in on their head, use as a blanket, and use as a ground cover...essentially the all around useful fashion accessory), getting supplies for our journey up north, showing her about the clinic and the ABC campus, and packing our stuff for our bus ride the next day.  Two other short term volunteers at the clinic joined us, and the four of us along with some other friends went out for Ethiopian food for dinner.

The next day, we went to the monthly expat farmer’s market and then hurried to the bus station after returning our car.  We got to the station right as the “correct” bus was arriving, and I fought my way onto it to get us seats.  I was quite pleased with myself until I learned that I was on the wrong bus.  The man checking tickets didn’t notice and I didn’t look at the sign saying where the bus was going.  Thankfully some other “muzungus” (literally translated as aimless wander but is more used for any foreigner in Malawi) noticed and got me off the bus.  We watched that bus and others come and go and found the our bus would be three hours late because of a tire problem.  We waited at the nearby KFC (which also coincidentally has Malawi’s only drive through) until the bus came.  We got on and because it got to Mzuzu so late, we stayed the night at a hostel there.

On Sunday (after getting peed on by one of the hostel dogs), my sister and I took a shared taxi down to the lakeside town of Nkata Bay and to our hostel, Mayoka Village.  We got there around mid-morning and ended up camping because they were so full.  After getting ourselves sorted out, we walked into town see it, and buy some snacks.

The land surrounding Nkata Bay is very hilly (almost mountainous) and there are several bays along the edge of Lake Malawi.  This place isn’t full of sandy beaches but of rocky outcroppings along the lake.  This means you must navigate your way down to the lake if you want to swim, kayak, or SUP.  We stayed here until Tuesday morning and in the short amount of time we were here, we kayaked and SUPed around the lake, did a nice walk up the hill behind town to a remote beach, people watched the Peace Corp group and Scottish school groups that stayed at Mayoka, and enjoyed being by the water.  

In Africa, much of the travel revolves around going from one interesting place of lodging to another.  There isn’t normally a lot to do partly because the sun goes down around 1730 and because there isn’t a great amount of tourist things to do.  This means that you do about 6 hours worth of activity a day (ie walking into town, hiking, swimming, etc) and spend the rest of the time hanging out where you stay.  This makes African travel a bit slow but thankfully I had some books and podcasts to fill the time.

On Tuesday, we left Mayoka and two sister we met there joined us on our minibus trip up to Livingstonia.  For the next week or so we stayed near Livingstonia and did a five day trek of the Nyika plateau, but I’ll talk about that in the next post.

The main bay of Nkata Bay

Looks like it just needs some TLC

People moving around on the beach of the main bay

View from hike up the hill

Cabbage patch on the side of the trail

Wooden dugout canoes on a beach

What most houses look like in Malawi

Looks like Santa was doing his laundry in Malawi

Looking at town and the hills behind it

Internet while traveling in Africa is slow at best

Hello!  I have not died or fallen into some African void or hole.  There has not been good internet during my 5 weeks traveling around Malawi so that is why nothing has been posted.  As I type this, I am sitting in JFK airport in NYC waiting for my final flight to Sacramento and home.  I had written a post to put up before I started my five weeks but I ran out of time.  I am posting it below and will post about my five weeks over the next month or so (with pictures).  That way you can read about the interesting things that happened...even if it is late.

Volunteering Done and Meeting up with my Sister

My last post was about two weeks ago but as much as there has been change, most stuff has stayed the same.  Today was my final day volunteering at the clinic and it was sad to go.  Yesterday for lunch, one of the doctors, the clinic administrator, the head nurse, my friends the Millers, the Canadian couple who is at the clinic until the end of July, and I went out to lunch as a going away for me and to thank me for my time.  I was touched by this because outside of the head nurse, I didn’t publicize my last day.  Today, the clinic was work as usual but at the morning devotions, the clinic administrator thanked me for my time, effort, and hoped that this was not the last time I came to ABC and Malawi.

Outside of my preparations to leave, the last two weeks at the clinic have been quite slow and I had quite a few “off” days.  By “off,” I mean that living in the developing world got to me and have me some transitory stomach and fever issues.  Nothing too bad but enough that I was really concerned that it was the start of malaria (key symptoms of malaria is cyclical fevers that occur about every 8 hours) but after an afternoon off and about 12 hours of sleep, I was back to somewhat of normal.

One of my big things to do in the last weeks was to renew my visa.  Malawi makes you renew your visa every 30 days even if you got one for multiple months.  I took a day off thinking it would be an exercise in patience, time wasting, and boredom but it ended up being one of the easiest bureaucratic things I have done.  I showed up around 8am and was done 20 minutes later and out of 10,000 kwacha (about $15) in legitimate fees (and not bribes).

I did help out with a vital sign clinic in front of one of the big shopping stores in the city and that was actually much fun.  It is so fun to people watch and see how the different nationalities in the city move around and dress.  

Tomorrow, my sister Karyn and I meet up in Lilongwe and we will travel the next month in Malawi hitting up all the big tourist places:  Nkata Bay, Nyika Plateau, Livingstonia, Mt. Mulanje and a running race up and down it, Zomba Plateau, Blantyre, Cape McClear, and Likoma Island.  We will be doing lots of hiking, swimming, minibus riding, and eating.  It will be an adventure and it begins with my car rental tomorrow.  I rented a car from someone who works at the clinic’s brother for a day.  I get it tomorrow and am slightly terrified about driving.  Mainly because they drive on the left side of the road but also because driving rules are somewhat loose at times in Malawi.  Here’s to the real adventure tomorrow.

Thoughts about my Week and Africa in General

For this post, I’ll talk a little about some of the interesting things that happened to me this last week and some of the cultural things I have learned about Africa in my time here.  

This week is my third week volunteering and for the most part I spent it in the treatment room and helping triage patients.  This week also brought a Canadian couple who are going to volunteer at the clinic for two months (she is a nurse and he is a second year medical student) and a Malawian national whose family is from India who is studying nursing in Boston.  She is also volunteering at the clinic but in a more limited manner because she has just started her nursing education.  The one interesting thing I did do was go with Dr. Ivey to the Maula prison in Lilongwe for a clinic.

Maula prison is the big prison in Lilongwe and from what I heard the high security one.  Before anyone gets all worried, we were only allowed in the medical buildings on the prison campus (which were provided by Irish Aid) and these were separated by tall wire walls with razor wire on top.  We were not allowed to take pictures (because of an armed group who entered the prison and facilitated the escape of 5-6 prisoners last year) but because the prison is essentially open air with wire walls to separate the different section, you could see the other buildings.

The prison officials choose 70 men and about 30 women to be seen and many had scabies, wounds, and coughs which were probably the result of the overcrowding (there are 200 men sleeping in a building made for 60) and malnutrition (if your family doesn’t bring you food, then you get a serving of nsima (essentially polenta) once a day with a serving of beans at least once per week).  The prisoners were there for murder, theft, illegal border crossers coming into Malawi, and any other crime you can think of.  After visiting a prison during my time in Peru, it was a good experience to see another one in a foreign country.

My other interesting adventure this week was taking the minibus to the center of town.  I waited about 30 minutes, got on, and then was let off about a half-mile away.  Thankfully, one of the nurses at the clinic I know was also let off and she told me that there is a police stop up the road.  This means that the minibuses going that way must not be overcrowded but ours was.  We caught another one where I opened and closed the door for people got on and off and got let off myself about a half-mile from where I wanted to go.  Essentially, a quick 10 minute car trip took over an hour and didn’t even get me to where I wanted to go.  

In the center of town, I bought some gifts at the local craft markets (they call these curio shops) and kept telling the shop owner that he isn’t giving me a discount when were are bargaining.  He never acknowledged my comment but his friends nearby laughed.

So far, Africa has been so different than what I expected.  I came here figuring it would be similar to South America because they are both developing part so the world, use mainly cash, barter for everything, and because I look so different from the locals.  What I have found is that I underestimated what I would encounter.  First, being a mzungu (what they say for a white person or foreigner ;similar to gringo in South America) gets prices marked ridiculously up.  This means that you never know what a fair price is.  Unless you are a master bargainer, what to pay the mzungu markup, or actually know what the price should be, it is cheaper and easier to do most of the shopping at the supermarkets or fixed price gift shops.  It makes it less interesting but sometimes makes it easier.

Another big difference is the lack of the sense of time.  I was told soon after arriving to never trust an African who says to wait five minutes because that means nothing.  You could wait 10 or 20 minutes or what you want may never come or happen.  This is why public transport can be frustrating.  The minibuses in Lilongwe and actual buses that run between the cities stop more or less anytime someone wants to get off or on.  This means when you get on a long-distance bus, you never know when you will arrive.

The other interesting thing is the food.  The general Malawian diet is nsima with relish, veggies, and occasionally meat.  This is not eaten by people who can afford better.  In Lilongwe, you can find find good food from India (because both India and Malawi were under British rule at some point), samosas galore, fried doughnuts, pizza, hamburgers, a drive-through KFC, and other western style food but there are not “Malawian” restaurants.  From what I have been told, it is because there isn’t much more to Malawian cuisine except for nsima.

This next week will be another week of volunteering and in about two weeks, my sister will join me in Lilongwe for a month of traveling in Malawi.

Volunteering at ABC Clinic

This Africa trip is made up of four parts.  The first was seeing my friends (the Millers) who live in Malawi with my friend Steph and then traveling with Steph to Victoria Falls. the second is spending five weeks volunteering at the clinic my friend works at, the third is traveling around Malawi for about a month with my sister, and the fourth is stopping in England on my way back to the States to see a friend I worked with at summer camp years ago.  The second part of my trip started about two weeks ago when I started volunteering.

ABC (aka African Bible Colleges) is an organization that has three colleges throughout Africa (they are also in Liberia and Uganda also), and at their campus in Lilongwe, Malawi, there is a medical clinic.  Prior to coming to Malawi, I contacted them to see the feasibility and possibility of volunteering as a nurse, and they were more than happy to have me.  The clinic consists of three parts, the community side, the private side, and the ward.  The community side is a clinic that is run for the poorer Malawians and a place for the government and NGOs to do community vaccinations and clinics.  Because I have not been there, I can’t really say much more than that.  The private side is for people who have medical insurance or can self-pay for their care.  The ward is the in-patient part of the clinic for patients who need more care than a doctor’s appointment or one time treatment.

I have been helping in the private side of the clinic and it has been an experience.  What happens is patients will be seen by the doctors and go to the “treatment room.”  This is a cross between an ER and an urgent care because patients who are acutely sick, say with a high fever, active vomiting, or another medical issue where treatment should not be delayed, will be brought there immediately.  Patients also got there after doctor appointments to receive their prescribed treatment.  This means this area is busy, has a lot of people moving through it throughout the day, and has challenging needs.  I have been helping in the treatment room and triaging patients.  The work is not glamorous and sometime slow but it is challenging because of the language issues that present (a good subsection of Malawians speak only Chichewa, the other national language, and not English), cultural issues, and not knowing exactly how the clinic works.

Outside of ABC, I have had four opportunities to spend time in the villages, and these days were more exciting and what I like to do.  One afternoon was an epilepsy clinic in Lilongwe.  An organization runs bimonthly clinics for patients to receive continual treatment and also for new patients to be diagnosed and receive treatment.  It was heartbreaking because many of the patients also had developmental issues or severe complications from malaria.  My other opportunities were to help with clinics done an American ER doctor, Dr. Ivey, who spends 2-3 months in Malawi doing clinics in the villages, or bush, every year.

Three times this last week I went outside of Lilongwe with Dr. Ivey.  We went to two villages and a the youth prison.  The first day was to Mlombwa which is at least an hour and a half away with half of that time on deeply rutted roads.  The second day was to Chinsapo which is only about 30 minutes away but you have to cross a makeshift bridge to get there.  The third day was at the juvenile prison about an hour away.  Each of these days we saw between 100-150 patients, and I helped triage, take vital signs, and do rapid malaria tests.  I really enjoyed these three days because it was something different than the clinic.  It also allowed me to get out into the countryside to see how Malawians who don’t leave near a tarmac road live, and realize how isolated they can be when the dirt roads turn to mud and become inaccessible in the wet season.

I don’t have any pictures for this post because I haven’t been taking any.  I will take some and hopefully post some during the week.