Spring Break

Two weeks of travel and relaxation has been blissful. My college classmate, Susan Kearns Settles, flew into the Lilongwe airport Thursday, March 29, to accompany me on my exploration of the country and only departed this afternoon. After four nights in the city, we hiked Nkoma mountain, my now-default hike. The length and difficulty of the walk up the mountain makes it perfect for a day trip. I keep returning, enjoying it as much each time as the previous, and hope to hike it again before leaving the country. We then persuaded Lisa Kowalski, a missionary from the San Diego area to take a beach trip with us to Livinstonia and Nkhotakota pottery. The bungalow at Livinstonia was so neat (and the air conditioning was really welcome). But Nkhotakota pottery was magical. The night we arrived, we enjoyed dinner on our brick condi (porch) watching the moon rise over the lake framed by the hibiscus bushes and trees just in front of us. The flat tire on the trip home added an adventure. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as I saw the rubber of our tire flying behind us in my rear view mirror. Luckily, within 10 minutes of the flat, Georgina (a woman from England who’s taught here 10 years now) and her passengers stopped to help us. We might have accomplished the change of tires ourselves, but the spare tire was flat as well. Thankfully, Georgina’s passengers drove the tire in their truck to the nearest village to have it pumped and we made it home without further incident. AAA never seemed like such a luxury service until that afternoon!

Easter weekend in Africa wasn’t very “eastery”. Somehow, being outside my familiar culture makes it hard to realize what holidays I’m missing at home. Ethough I have celebrated holidays here, I don’t feel that the holidays which have passed actually happened because the celebrations aren’t traditional to me. Being here is rather like what I imagine Narnia must have been to the Pevensie children-time seems to go on here while it must be standing still at home since I’m not with my family, keeping track of the year with all the things we normall do. I keep thinking I’ll go home and nothing will have changed! Unfortunately, the electricity went out while we were in Easter service so that we couldn’t read all the worship hymns on power point. But one of the missionary couples on campus, the Leboffes, sang a beautiful duet of Amazing Grace and reminded me of Johnny Cash and June Carter (a comparison that popped to mind particularly since I saw Walk the Line the night before). Their voices wove together with a soft twang that the cloudy sky and breeze we saw and felt through the levered windows of our octagonal church on campus seemed to compliment.

The second week of break was just as busy as the first. Susan and I headed to Liwonde for safari, staying at Chinguni Hills Lodge, an experience in itself. The owner, one Daron, was a character straight out of Dickens, born and raised in Malawi, of South African and British descent. His stories of living in the bush helped me understand how different it is to grow up in a place truly undeveloped-when he says he ran away from home as a boy when he was mad with his parents into the wild he doesn’t just mean hiding in the garden in the back yard until the parents found him! He means he literally lived like a little Tarzan until he decided to return. We enjoyed the activities of the lodge as well such as the canoe trip on the Shire (pronounced “Shiry”, NOT named for the home of the hobbits in JRR Tolkien’s books :) river with the hippos, paddled by a Malawian guide, and a walking tour into the park where we saw water buck, impala, warthog, and various birds. So after being regaled with excellent food and good stories by all the guests and the host not the least, we packed our bags and headed an hour south to the Zomba plateau for three nights. If we thought we were reliving memories of camp in North Carolina at the lodge with our beds covered in mosquito nets in the cabin-ish rooms, we certainly were flooded with memories at the smell of the long needled pines and cool, moist mountain air of Zomba. Charisa planned fabulous meals for the chef of the house, Elson, to prepare each night and we woke to sip our Kenyan coffee on the porch overlooking the mist and winding, hard packed clay roads of the mountain side. We also enjoyed berries brought to our gate by vendors who picked them wild in the woods-Himalayan raspberries and strawberries which won’t be available in the city until the season starts here in August or a little earlier.

One morning, Susan and I traveled the windy road back into Zomba town in search of the botanical garden there. After nearly thirty minutes of touring the city, we finally found the garden tucked off the side of the road, behind a rather obscure entrance behind the local college and other buildings built in the South African Dutch style. After parking, we walked through a little nursery with sinking hopes, thinking the guide book confused a nursery with a garden, unlike what we’d expected. But we had a true Secret Garden moment when we walked through a little gate behind the two ratty looking green houses at the back of the nursery. The garden extended through beautiful palms,tropical flowers, and poinsettias in bloom, as we followed the sound of the water fall. Apparently, children in the area go to the garden with Sunday school teachers to act out Bible stories and be in a beautiful, peaceful part of God’s earth. After seeing the garden, we understood why-it looked a bit like a garden of Eden. We were honestly amazed at the mixture of manicured grounds with overgrown tropical plants and moss, but unfortunately, neither of us remembered our cameras-one reason to return to the area, I suppose!

Pam joined Susan and me on the trip home with a through-stop at Mua Mission, a mission begun about 100 years ago by a catholic priest to integrate the Malawian culture with Catholicism. The museum there was beautifully decorated on the outside with traditional African paintings and displayed all kinds of African masks and models of the Malawian ceremonies. Altogether, we had a blast hiking, relaxing, conversing and challenging each other on our observations of the beauty and sorrow of this developing nation! Monday starts the 4th and last quarter of the year. As much as I am glad to have the opportunity to see my students again, I am looking forward to the end of this school year!

(Having trouble posting pictures but will get to it)