Muli bwanje from Mulanje!

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  Mulanje, Mulanje, Malawi
Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Hello everybody!! Got lots and lots of exciting news this week so get excited! Hope everyone has had a fab week and is happy this Wednesday! Crazy computer is being crazy again so I really hope this works!

So on Thursday last week we went out for lunch to celebrate the end of our teaching program, we went to a little pizza place down the road in the uber posh area, it was amazing!! Had real live pizza and real live coke, it was incredibly ridiculous how excited we were, but it was just so good! We sat out on a little terracy bit in the sunshine and felt very cool and sophisticated being out for lunch, was just like Sex in the city!  Then it was so cool, Mthwalo came to pick us up to take us shopping and because the van was being serviced he came in a truck and we all rode in the back like real Malawians! Was actually the funnest thing in the world, we all stood up and got extremely blown about and waved at everyone and felt like the Queen! Feel very very tame now though whenever we go in the van, that's definitely the only real way to travel!

So Mulanje Mulanje!! Left really really early on Friday morning because its like a 7 or 8 hour drive away, again Mthwalo was a bit fed up with our incredible hyperness and choruss of The bear went over the mountain and Climb every mountain allllll the way there! Was so amazing driving through the countryside again just like it always is, its just such a beautiful country! And there are so many interesting things to see on the way like passing through all the little villages and through really busy markets just in the middle of nowhere, men at the side of the road selling wood carvings and boys selling smoked mice on sticks like kebabs (ooo, yes please, Ill have five of those to take home to my mother!) We also got to go through Blantyre which was really good to see another big town, stopped at Mthwalos grannys house which was really sweet! Scariest thing in the world though driving from Blantyre down to Mulanje…you just see this huge THING looming out of the clouds and as you get closer you are like OH my goodness that is the mountain and as you get even closer it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and you are like what in the WORLD are we doing planning to climb that tomorrow!!! Its so beautiful because all round the bottom there are these tea plantations which are just the BRIGHTEST green in the sunshine and just GORGEOUS! We have some fab photos of the people cutting the tea with secateurs with big baskets on their backs…Jo has an especially interesting one of a woman threatening us with her secateurs…its so hard to not upset anyone by taking pictures of them because everything is just so amazing to see!

We stayed right at the bottom of the mountain in a little CCAP (central church of African Presbyterians) hut which was just SO cute, and extreme luxury after what we are used to, we even got free internet! We were given two rooms with three beds in each but we thought that was far too unsociable for our holiday, so we all squeezed in one room and pushed the beds together, me and Katherine very cosy in our tiny single bed!

And then the next day…dum dum duuuuum, the mountain!!! We set off really early with our guide Lewis and our porter Aufan, they were really cool and really friendly and stuff, even though we made poor Aufan carry all our heavy things! WOW though climbing that mountain was hard hard work!! Was a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be, was pretty much scrambling on hands and knees for a lot of it, and climbing over huge rocks over rivers and fighting your way through jungley bits, was actually really really tough! And sooooo hot, sweated more than I have in my LIFE! (nice!) When we finally got to the top (hooray!) Lewis admitted that when he first saw us he thought we weren’t going to make it, which we were a bit insulted about…but thinking back to Hannahs pink trainers,  me and Emma with our hippo and penguin (oh yes, Cyril made it too!) sticking out of our rucksacks, and with our supplies of jam sandwiches, orange squash and multicoloured sweets, Im not actually that surprised!! Was the most beautiful scenery in the world though, actually just GORGEOUS! And really crazy varied terrain as well it was so strange, like one minute you were fighting your way through a rainforest with all like lianas and buttress roots and everything (plenty of time to remember the technical names!) and then the next you were in a savannah type place straight from the Lion King, and then the next you were hanging off a rock face wondering where all the trees had gone, it was very very strange! We kept meeting all the time women who had been collecting firewood up there, which was just DEPRESSING, they would trot past you with a huge pile of sticks on their head and a baby on their backs, not at all breaking a sweat, before you could even pant a muli bwanje! It took us about seven hours to reach the top, which was just the best feeling to see our little hut sitting there! It was really cool, you came over the top of this peaky bit and down below there was this massive plateau bit which was all grassy and savannah-y, expected to see zebras trotting about but sadly no, and there was our hut down there! After getting there and getting our breath back, Jo and I went with Lewis to a viewpoint about half an hour away across the platuea, was tempted to just stay at the hut but OH my goodness it was so worth it to go! Was one of those moments where you walk and walk and youre like, where are we even going, and then suddenly you just come to an edge, and it was the most beautiful view I have EVER seen in my WHOLE entire life!! Because Mulanje is the only real mountain around and all the rest of the country is so flat you could just see for MILES and miles and miles, was the most amazing thing EVER! And the sun was setting and everything and it was just so perfect!! My new favorite place in the world is up there now, just wish everyone else could go and see it!! Was AMAZING.

So then after spending faaaaar too long there meaning we had to walk back to the hut in the dark (scary stuff) we got back and it was just fab, the cutest little place ever! Theres no electiricty or water or anything, so we had to cook spaghetti on an open fire which was AMAZING! Then we all sat round a campfire with Lewis and Aufan drinking hot chocolate and marshmallows we made the poor lad carry up the mountain, and we were all singing songs and telling stories and stuff and it was soooo cool! Like Aufan had all these really cute stories like African fabely things like how did the Lion get its mane sort of thing, which was so funny! They kept asking us for stories in return and we were really stuck, we gave them the hare and the tortoise but they were not impressed…definitely need to get myself a repertoire in case such a situation arises again! SO so nice sitting round the campfire with them, just the best thing in the world. Have never eeeever seen so many stars either, was just FABULOUS! Even saw my first shooting star! And then we all went to bed in our little bunkbeds and it was very cosy although VERY cold! Just the weirdest feeling in the world, like once we had blown out the candles and everything it was just PITCH pitch dark, like darker than you can ever imagine, and it was just US on a mountain it was the WERIDEST feeling. Very very strange. Really really makes you remember though how blessed you are though staying somewhere like that. Like, for us cooking on a campfire and going to the loo in a crazy outside hole (NIGHTmare in the dark, don’t even ask!)  is a bit of an adventure, but for soooo many people its just totally normal, like the one in three people who don’t even HAVE a proper loo at all, its just crazy when you think about it. Really really remember everybodsy just how blessed you are!

Then the next day we all came down again!! Made you VERY proud scrambling down all the really steep bits thinking of how you climbed up them yesterday! And was very amazing because it was really cloudy and misty the day before but then on Sunday it was really sunny, there were all these rando,m other mountains and things that you didn’t even know were there and then on Sunday it was suddenly like, ta-da, a mountain! And on Sunday we saw looooaaaddsss of baboons just hanging out in the wild which was pretty cool, and we even saw leopard poo! Exciting times, I know! Also oin thew way back we made a detour to get to this waterfall Lewis was always going on about – craziest detour of my life, basically STRAIGHT down a crazy cliff, absaling down the grass and praying its going to hold your weight! And then we had to basically climb down a little waterfall, felt very Indianna Jonesy! And we were all getting SO cross and like, this darn waterfall hgad better be worth it, and Katherine was going on about how amazing Niagra falls were and how she was not going to be ahppy if this waterfall wasn’t ten times better, was very funny…but it turned out the waterfall when we finally got to it was SO worth it!! It was huuugggee, and just so gorgeous with the mountains all behind it, and it was so sunny and there was this massive pool at the bottom and then all these natural water slide things like in Swiss family Robinson, was the most beautiful place EVER!! And Lewis said that the pool at the bottom of the waterfall was 60 METERS deep can you imagine that!! We said to him are there any creepy animals living in there, imagininy all sorts of horrible dinasoury things lurking at the bottom, but he was like no, its too cold for anything to live in there…that probably should have made us listen…but we went swimming anyways! And yep he was right, it was FREEZING!!! Me and Jo and Hannah all went into the big pool and me and Hannah jumped off huge rocks into the water, (no-one tell Tearfund) SO scary but just amazing!!!

So yes, sorry for wittering for so long, but it was just all so so amazing! SO sore afterwards though, never been this achey in my life!! On the way back we stopped at a tearoom place in Dedza, which is like a little pottery place a couple of hours away from home, and we were all limping around through the gardens, it was so embarrassing! I said that we looked like a hospital out on a day visit and all the other customers looked up in surprise like, oh…aren’t they? That was a very cute place as well, they even had cheesecake which is apparently famous and was AMAZING!! For the loos they had one for women, one for men and one for women with babies, disabled people and others in a hurry! Very cute place!

So that was our exciting weekend and had a LOT of fun, was just the most beautiful place EVER! As for the next plan…turns out Amon has planned for us to take our teaching program to three more schools around Lilongwe! To start with I was a bit grumnpy with that plan, just because we thought we had finished the teaching and were ready to put it behind us and move onto the next thing…but now Ive been thinking about it it really is a good thing…because we don’t have to do any preparation or anything it’s a really god use of our time, and its such a good program its really going to be good to reach more people with it…all in Gods plan for what we are doing foir him here so must be good anyways!

Ok, wow I have used up so much time and written so much today, very sorry!! Lots of love to everyone, hope you all have a fantastic week! God bless! xxxxxxxxxxx

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