Parental Guest Blog

Something you don’t expect to hear your kid say when you are raising her in Arlington, Virginia: “You guys should try the fried termites while you’re here. Oh, I forgot, you can’t get termites right now, it’s caterpillar season.”

So, we just spent a little over two weeks visiting Margaret in Malawi, seeing quite a bit of the country, and visiting her village. She thought it would be cute for us to write the blog for this time period so it could be from the visitor’s perspective, instead of the resident’s perspective. Since we have always been terrible parents and spoiled her completely, we are now writing.

We saw and did way too much to capture in this posting in any significant way, so we thought we would just include a few little samples, or vignettes, of our experiences while we were in Malawi. Just to set the scene a bit, we will first give a tiny overview of the trip so you can see how it all fits together.

We left Washington, DC on Tuesday evening March 30. The weather was forecast to rise into the eighties over the coming days and the Cherry Blossoms were supposed to peak on Thursday or Friday. Opening Day for Major League Baseball was on Monday, April 5th and Obama was scheduled to throw out the first pitch. This would be the first Opening Day we had missed since the Nationals brought baseball back to the Nation’s Capital.

In contrast, when we landed in London on Wednesday morning, the temperatures were in the 30s and the snows in Scotland were severe enough that a bus on a school field trip had skidded off the road, killing a student. Nonetheless, we visited with a couple of Steve’s former colleagues on Wednesday evening in London and on Thursday mid-day in Greenwich before flying overnight to Johannesburg, changing planes, and arriving in Lilongwe around noon on Good Friday (4/2).

We spent Friday and Saturday getting organized and acclimated and then joined Mark, Cindy (parents), Candy (aunt), and Alyssa (PCV friend of Margaret’s) for a safari to South Luangwa National Park in Zambia (Vignette number 1), arriving back in Lilongwe on Wednesday evening, 4/7. On Thursday morning, we drove about 400 kms to the Satemwa Tea Estate in the Shire Headlands south of Blantyre (Vignette number 2) where we stayed two nights and hit the road again on Saturday, 4/10. We spent one night on top of the Zomba Plateau north of Blantyre and then drove 450 kms north along Lake Malawi to the Ngala Beach Resort (Vignette number 3), where we stayed for Sunday evening, 4/11.

On Monday, 4/12, we drove to Mzuzu, which is the “big city” closest to Margaret. There, we prepared for our visit to her site and the northern part of Malawi. We stopped by her site on Tuesday morning, 4/13, and then had lunch with one of her former headmasters, his wife, and another PCV. After dropping a student off at his school, we drove up the escarpment to Livingstonia and back down again to stay at another lakeside place for the evening (Vignette number 4). On Wednesday, 4/14, we worked our way south again, stopping by her site to change some bags and meet some more of her village family. We then stocked up in Rumphi for the trip into Nyika National Park (Vignettes 5 and 6). On Thursday 4/15, we toured a bit around Nyika and Margaret gathered information about a potential camp for kids from her area. We left Nyika on Friday, 4/16, and began our way back to Lilongwe for our Sunday, 4/18 departure. Unbeknownst to us, also on Wednesday 4/14 a volcano in Iceland erupted and the resulting cloud of ash closed every airport in Europe. This meant that when we got to the airport on Sunday, Steve left for some business in Kenya, and Jane stayed in Lilongwe for an extra week until she was finally able to get a flight back to the U.S. on 4/25-26.


Vignette number 1:

I am writing this sitting beside the pool next to the bar at a campsite lodge in Zambia. I am looking out over the Luangwa River, which eventually flows into the Zambezi on its way to the Indian Ocean. Also gathered around the pool are several interesting characters including South African safari guides, German campers, and “overlanders” (people driving around Africa) from Zimbabwe.

The river is full of Hippos, which bellow just about all the time, either to let the other Hippos know where they are or just because. They remain pretty much submerged all day to stay cool, but come out in the evenings to graze on the grass around the tents. Everyone was complaining this morning at breakfast because the noise of the hyenas killing a baboon last night had kept them up, but we slept through it, so we are feeling pretty fresh for the morning game drive.

A game drive is where a group goes out into the bush in a 4x4 to see what you can see. We are in a pattern in which we do one early in the morning (wakeup call is at 5am so we can be on the trail by 6am) and another one in the evening – two hours before sunset and two hours with a powerful spotting light after sunset.

The rains just ended here last week, so the rivers are swollen and the countryside is green. This makes it hard to spot some of the game because the animals can scatter throughout the park instead of having to gather around a few watering holes. It is particularly hard to see the big cats, because they can be just about anywhere. This is really frustrating our driver/guide, Philemon, because he saw a large pride of lions here just the other day. Except for one lioness, he has not been able to spot them again and our drives are mostly birds, antelope, elephants, giraffes, and zebra. I don’t think he understands that we don’t really care about this. We are thousands of miles from home in a place that is incredibly beautiful, looking at birds, antelope, and zebras by the score. We have also seen enough hippos, giraffe, elephants, and other animals we have only ever seen in the zoo to make it very clear that this is different. This is also most assuredly not “Lion Country Safari”, or one of Disney’s theme parks. From his perspective, this will not be a complete trip until he shows us lions.
The frustration for Philemon continues until the final night drive. About ½ hour into the drive, his radio goes off and another of the guides indicates that lions have been spotted, but that they are all the way across the park. He gives us the choice of driving at relative high-speed across the park (not stopping for much of anything). He says we will arrive at the lions just at sunset. We tell him to go for it. On the way across, we end up chasing a giraffe for a bit and getting a bull elephant sufficiently annoyed with us that he trumpets and nearly charges, but we reach the lions while there is still a little light in the sky. They are walking purposefully across the plain and Philemon thinks that they are heading into the bush where we won’t be able to see them, so he pulls in front of them to head them off. It turns out that they are actually stalking zebra and we have just put ourselves in the middle of the hunt. They walk past our 4x4 and freeze at the crest of the next hill before they pounce, but either due to our interruption or just blind luck, the zebras win this round, run, and stand at the top of the ridge to bray a warning.









Vignette number 2:

We completed our safari adventure and took the daylong drive back to Lilongwe. This is about 4 hours on unpaved road experiencing the “African Massage” of driving on washboard packed clay, followed by about 3 hours on good road. Luckily for us, the car didn’t break down on the relatively sparsely populated Zambian side of the border, but waited until we were only about an hour outside of Lilongwe.
The next day, after spending a couple of hours visiting some places and people that Margaret needed to catch up with in Lilongwe, we headed down to Satemwa tea estate outside Blantyre (about 4 hours from Lilongwe). I am not sure how to adequately describe the opulence, taste, and beauty of this place. This is the way the great plantation owners used to live in colonial times. This place is seriously gorgeous and in a stunning setting. The Shire (pronounced she-re) headlands are rolling green hills around the Shire River. Satemwa is a Free Trade tea producer and one of the smaller estates at only 10,000 acres, or so. The owners have moved to a newer house on the property and decided a couple of years ago to turn the original 1920’s plantation owner’s home into a lodge. Jane keeps saying, “How could they move? I could never leave this place.”

For two days, we treat ourselves to high tea on the croquet lawn, gourmet meals, and picnics and walks on the estate. We were in the Planter’s bedroom and Margaret was, fittingly, in the Nursery. Both were huge suites with French doors opening out onto patios. The beds are all four posters surrounded by netting. Next time you are in the neighborhood, we highly recommend it.








Vignette number 3:

We leave the South of Malawi and drive about 5 hours north along the lake road. This road is labeled the M5 and is one of Malawi’s two major north/south thoroughfares, so it is the functional equivalent of I-75 in the US. Despite this, almost all of the bridges are still one lane and the road is used by trucks, cars, bicycles, and pedestrians. It makes for interesting driving, but we still average nearly 100 km/h (about 60 mph).

Lake Malawi is the third largest lake in Africa (only Victoria and Tanganyika are bigger) and forms the Eastern edge of Malawi for much of the length of the country. At several points along the lake there are beach resorts where one can stay. Someone recommended that we try a place called the Ngala Lodge, which turned out to be a very charming and secluded lodge with its own stretch of beach, pool, lush setting, good food, and plentiful bird viewing. The lodge is owned and operated by Chris and Sandy from South Africa and Zimbabwe, respectively. They are wonderfully attentive and gracious hosts in a gorgeous, well-maintained setting.


Vignette number 4:

Did you ever read “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” when you were growing up? Much of transport in Malawi turns out to be quite like this. Malawi has a couple of major north/south roads – the M5 is the lake road and the M1 is the major road that goes from the southern end of the country to the northern end. These roads are quite good and traffic is generally sparse enough that you can motor along at 50 to 70 mph in moderate safety while only killing the occasional chicken. Since Malawi is a long thin country running generally north/south, this means that you can pretty much get from one end of the country to the other within a day, which is pretty rare in Africa. This might, however, lead one to believe that you can actually drive around Malawi fairly easily, which would not be accurate.

The primary case in point could be almost anything else that would show up as a road on a Malawi National map, but in this instance is the road from the lakeshore up to Livingstonia. Livingstonia, as it turns out, was where Livingston founded a Mission in the late 1800’s. It is a cute little town at the top of a bluff perhaps two or three thousand feet above Lake Malawi. It is a relatively steep drop from the top of the plateau down to the lake, which makes for some pretty spectacular views, but also has resulted in what must be one of the great roads from Hell up and down the cliff face.

We now know this because we took the road up - and then down again. We were supposed to be staying at the top of the hill one evening, but turned around and headed back down when we found the entire top to be a muddy quagmire and felt that another night down by the lake would not be such a bad idea after all.

The trip up is only 15 km, which, under normal circumstances, is just a little longer than a Saturday morning 10k foot race. It takes place on a gravel and mud, single-lane, series of switchback curves (numbered 1 to 20) that take close to an hour to traverse. This is assuming that you have a 4 wheel-drive vehicle that can actually handle it. We did, but the claw marks we left in the handholds as we gripped for our lives on the way up and down will be found by future users of this particular Land Cruiser for a long time.

In addition, you do occasionally meet people coming the other direction. When this happens, there is a delicate little 4x4 ballet as the two drivers try to figure out who is closer to a wide spot in the road and how you can get whichever vehicle is on the cliff-edge position safely by said wide spot so that everyone can proceed. Luckily, people in Malawi are generally quite friendly and this pas-de-deux only rarely results in one participant crashing end-over-end down the face of the escarpment.


Vignette number 5: Road stories continued.

We are struggling with how to describe just how bad the roads can be. We have driven up a cliff face for 15 kilometers on a dirt, gravel, and stone goat track with 20 numbered hairpin turns. It took us 45 minutes to reach the top and then we nearly got stuck in mud because recent rains had turned the red clay into something with the same coefficient of friction as a sheet of wet ice. We turned around and went back down the same goat track we had just come up. This particular road is considered good enough to show up on the national map (see above).

The next day, we traveled up to the Nyika plateau to visit the National Park. Access to the park involves 60 kms of dirt road before you get to the park entrance and another 60 kms of dirt road once you are within the park. We called to check ahead on road conditions and were told that we would be fine as long as we were in a 4x4 (lesson-learned, every time they say the road is good, you are in trouble). It took us 3 ½ hours and we frequently felt like we were driving much faster than we really should have been.

In the middle of the drive in, we reached a spot where we were already up to our axels in mud and stopped. Our driver, James, climbed out and over his door, clambered onto the hood (the bonnet, since these folks speak British, not American) never touching the ground so he could reach back down to the dial that engages the free-wheeling front hubs (for the full 4x4 experience). We then ground on through another 200 yards of mud and out the other side, where he reversed the process and we drove on as though this was completely normal.

Again, this road appears on the national map of Malawi. It is the primary access road to the first National Park in the country. We are the only ones who think this is unusual. Everyone else we have spoken to thinks that the road is much better now that the weather is starting to dry out.


Vignette number 6:

The first National Park designated in Malawi was Nyika National Park. Nyika is a unique biological zone in Africa. It is a plateau some 6,500 feet above sea level. Because of the altitude, Nyika is generally much cooler than the rest of Malawi
(particularly the parts down by the lake). During the cold months, there will frequently be frost on the ground in the mornings.

Much of Nyika is a high grassland plateau that is unique within Malawi and awesome in its beauty. We are here just after the rainy season, so things are quite green. The Eland and Bushbuck are grazing with the Zebra right outside the lodge and don’t run away as you walk by. They are not tame, but they certainly aren’t afraid, either. It should be one of the jewels of a visit to Malawi, but almost no one comes here. You have to pack in your supplies and you have to make sure that you have enough fuel for the round trip (240 kms) because there is no market or fuel here at the park. There is also no cell service, internet, or most of the time, power. They do fire up the generator for about three hours each evening, but that is about it. Nonetheless, we would come back here in a heartbeat if given the chance. It is stunningly beautiful and reminiscent of our place in Maine. While there is good wildlife viewing, Nyika is particularly noted for birds and orchids. Over 200 orchids make their home on the plateau, over a dozen of which are unique to this site.

Let me describe, “roughing it” at Nyika. We stayed in a “Chalet” which is a cabin-like affair with two bedrooms, a great room, and all necessary facilities attached. When you arrive, Jeremiah has already built a roaring fire in the fireplace and is standing at the ready to make sure that there is nothing else that needs to be done. Since we had already been alerted to Jeremiah’s talents, we had in fact come supplied with flour and yeast and said, “Sure, why don’t you go on a bake a little bread for tomorrow.” This is of course, what you do with a wood stove, and Jeremiah happily spent the evening baking away for the next day. We ate in the lodge that first night and it was quite good, but on the second night we gave Jeremiah a chicken, a tomato, an onion, and some potatoes and veggies and asked him to do whatever he could. The result was one of the best meals we have had anywhere and Jane continually was wondering how she could bring Jeremiah home.

The planned portion of our trip concluded with a gorgeous night drive at Nyika (similar to what we had done at South Luangwa, but focused more on the rolling grasslands), another stay at the Ngala Beach Lodge, saying farewell to Margaret, and the drive back to Lilongwe for our respective flights out. After Jane spent an unscheduled week at the Kumbali Lodge outside Lilongwe (it’s where Madonna stays when she is in town), she was finally able to fly out on Sunday 4/25 and arrived back home on Monday, two days after Steve had come back from Kenya.