Beach bums and ear drums

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  Chitemba and Livingstonia, Malawi
Monday, October 9, 2006

After an eleven hour drive south - I've become quite adept and taking down the tent in the dark and getting on the truck still half asleep - we crossed the border into Malawi. As per usual, we were mobbed by trinket sellers as we got off the bus before running into the immigration hall to fill in the ubiquitous form (my profession this time is architect) and pay the visa fee (this time US$30 as it's part of the Commonwealth apparently, but you could only pay with US notes dated 2000 or later). I don't know what the Swiss did to Malawi (maybe they refused to open an anonymous bank account for the corrupt president) but Susy nearly choked on her Toblerone when she was told that the letter from the Malawi High Commission back home wasn't good enough so she had to pay $60 and visit another immigration office in the main town the next day. Eventually we all bundled back onto the truck throwing V signs to the trinket sellers, although I think they thought that I wanted to buy two.

a. Sunrise over Lake Malawi

By sheer coincidence, my iPod shuffled onto Madonna's 'Justify My Love' [Publicity Whore Remix] just as we pulled into a petrol station where a TV showing Sky News was informing us of the weather in western Scotland. I could barely see through my sweat-stained sun glasses but it looked cold. Whilst waiting for Brucie to go to the toilet again on came the entertainment news where we found out that Madge had gone and acquired the ultimate in celebrity fashion accessory - an African orphan. Obviously it couldn't be Ethiopian (what if she turned up at the same party as Angelina and her Ethiopian? Imagine the embarrassment!) so she'd decided to go for a Malawian. Now I don't know much about the story, but I gather the Malawian authorities are none too pleased. Personally I think taking one kid from unimaginable poverty and plonking it into a life of unimaginable wealth ain't right, especially when you consider that there are 2 million orphans in this country that need help, nearly all of which caused by AIDS.

But I digress. The Malawian equivalent of coffee shops on the every street corner is coffin shops - another side effect of AIDS which apparently accounts for 60% of all hospital patients. After the coffin shops were the fields and fields of marijuana plants - illegal but safe thanks to the corrupt police. Apparently Malawian Gold is some of the best weed found in Africa but I was too drunk and stoned to tell the difference.*

Before the days of big boats and Google Earth the great explorer David Livingstone stumbled into what was called Nyasaland meaning Ocean Land or something

b. Jacaranda trees in Mzuzu

. This is because it is home to Lake Malawi which is either the ninth or tenth largest lake in the world depending on the list you use. It is indeed a big lake, and contains over 500 species of fish, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth. We were heading to the lake for 3 days of beach and swimming, but I had been warned by the doctor before I left not to swim in it as it contains a bug called bilharzia which gets into your bowels by drilling through the skin and makes you pee blood before destroying your internal organs. That's what I was told, but apparently it only occurs in stagnant water and the lake had big surf. Besides, it was very hot and I doubted there was any room in my bowels for any bugs for reasons I won't get into but you could probably guess (4 days and counting).

Thankfully I met the morning with a very satisfying trip to the long-drop which seemed to cure one problem but another popped up: something was wrong with my left ear. I though it was just full of water after swimming but it wouldn't go away. I couldn't hear anything out of it and even getting through four of Nurse Lyn's cotton buds (more Serengeti dust than I thought possible) it still wasn't right. Thoughts of ear bilharzia began to cross my mind...

It was still bothering me that night at the campsite bar, which was actually quite good as the music was Dutch and atrocious. At the time I didn't notice the full moon and the sight of Gayle the Loon stroking the stray mangy dogs on the beach in between gulps of booze. We woke the next morning to discover that she had decided to leave the tour (her last trip was so much better, apparently) and work in the bar in exchange for accommodation. It's no coincidence that Loons are named after the end of lunar cycle when it's a statistical fact that the nutters come out (hence the term lunatic).

The second campground in Livingstonia was much more fun. It was a public park full of picnicing families and church groups celebrating Malawian Mother's Day (I wonder what Madonna did?). One church group set up their music and food right beside my tent and said that they would protect it for me. From what I didn't care to ask, but they couldn't stop the ants getting in and I spent a most uncomfortable night getting crawled over by several million of them.

After breakfast when a bold baboon stole our bananas from the table it was off to Zambia. En route we stopped at the capital Lilongwe which we could tell we were approaching by the number of aid agencies and their acronymic 4x4s on the road. Here I picked up some antibiotics for my ear which, despite not being painful, was really starting to annoy me.

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* Note to parents and future employers: this is of course a joke to lift your spirits from the depressing Madonna/AIDS stories.

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