Tuesday 19 July 2016

A tough day for Yanni and I as we said goodbye to lovely friends Annelies and Jerome, Linda and Linus and many others at Kuti, and started the final leg of our journey in Africa.  This was to be a 2 day trip by car from Kuti through Lilongwe and then on to Zambia, stopping tonight at the major town of Lusaka for a sleep over.  Tomorrow we are to travel on to Victoria Falls in Livingstone, where we will spent our last week.

We have chosen a two day drive instead of going by minibus, coach, train or plane for many reasons, all of them practical. The minibus is cheap but that’s because it is entirely unreliable, and traveling on one means accepting at least 20 human passengers in a van designed for 9, and an unknown quantity of baskets of hens, bags of maize, sugar cane or literally any other produce. The vans travel when they believe they are full, so you might insert yourself into a seat carefully at 9am and wait for 10 hours for the remaining 1 theoretical seat to be filled.  Malawi’s have incredible patience and tolerance for heat, thirst and discomfort.  I don’t.  We declined the minivan option.

The coach could have worked but only goes twice a week each way, neither on days that fitted in with our schedules.

The train also went about twice a week, but we would have had a very round about journey and again trains are unreliable, overpacked and Malawi’s are capable of doing anyone on one, such a lighting up  a little fire to make nsima, a bowl of maise flour and water cooked to form a porridge like gruel and then portioned into flat patties usually eaten by hand.  Nsima has no nutritional value but works well as a stomach filler. This is eaten 3 times a day, and it is said that an African does not believe he has eaten if he does not have nsima as part of his meal.  Again maize and other produce, and livestock like chickens can travel by train, so we were not keen to do this.

The plane rides involved lots of messing about via taxi and transfers and very high costs, so we opted for the 2 day travel by car.  This meant we could stop when we wanted to, and best of all see the changing landscape as we traveled.  So after sad farewells we loaded up our car and headed for the main roads of Malawi, many of which are dirt, and none of which have road names or any form of signposting.  Just as well Malawi is so beautiful!  We passed endless