nyika (sunday)

On the road early to try and get a ride. We’ve been warned that public transport here is very difficult to non-existant. We’d also been told that Nyika on a Sunday was going to be very hard so we thought we could go to Vwaza Marsh instead and try Nyika Monday. So we stood on the road and everyone who asked where to? We said Vwaza. Evidently there is a minibus that goes but it was up as early as we were so we continued to hope for a ride sooner rather than later. Finally a man comes over and asks where we’re headed. Vwaza. Oh, well I was going to Chilenda and thought I’d check. Oh well we’d been told we probably wouldn’t find a ride to Chilenda but if that’s where you’re going and you have room we’d love it. And so on to Nyika (chilenda is the camp that you stay at in nyika). We throw our bags in the back and get in the back seat of his double cab pickup. Gilbert works for the Forestry Commission for Nyika. They are harvesting the pine forest and replanting and he’s in charge. His brother and another guy from the company were also in the car. it was 120 kilometers of dirt road. I’m so glad we didn’t have to ride in the back with our bags…talk about dusty!

The views on the plateau are amazing. Very different from the rest of Malawi that we’d seen. Rolling vistas that you could see for ages. They had done lots of burning for new growth to get through and it seemed like a moon scape at parts. No villages around. When we checked in at reception and asked about the three day hike from Chilenda to Livingstonia that we’d called twice about in the previous 2 days, we were told that it had been put on temporary suspension due to an indiscretion on the part of one of the guides. (why this wasn’t told to us before we came?!). ok then. Went to set up our tent and think about what we wanted to do other than that hike…decided on an afternoon walk to Choisi Point and around to the dams…I think it was about 20k. not bad and a beautiful day for it. we saw kudu and elands (large antelope cousins). Cooked our dinner over the campfire and bundled up as we were told that it gets cold up here (2000m in altitude). Gilbert came to check on us from the timber camp. And after he left…it got cold. We climbed into the tent and ended up not sleeping much as it was too cold. I got up at 2am and stoked the fire back up, warmed up a little but had to get back in the tent as I was tired…woke up to a hard frost and when we opened our tent ice was falling off of it. hard to remember we were in Africa!

going north (saturday)

Get a ride to Kamphata from the eye hospital 6am Saturday morning and jump right on a minibus for Lilongwe! Then a bus for Mzuzu…uneventful trip…next bus to Rumphi where we stayed for the night…our jumping off point to get to Nyika Plateau. Went for dinner at Matunkha (lodge, restaurant that supports an orphanage). Rhona and I both ordered the Matunkha special—vegetarian, pumpkin pie, crispy cheese and stuffed tomato. It sounded interesting and was reasonably priced. When our plates came out it was a plateful of fried foods…we couldn’t tell what was there but went at it. we found fried cucumber (I don’t recommend it—it is just weird), fried cabbage leaves (also strange), fried green pepper, fried banana. The crispy cheese was a stick of cheddar that had also been fried. There was a cold mashed potato rosette. The pumpkin pie was pieces of pumpkin on a thin pizza crust and the stuffed tomato was full of leaves (very nice) tho garnished with a fried leaf. After the meal we wished we had gotten a picture but decided against ordering another just for a picture. (plus fried food all looks the same)

my table
rhona seeing patients
the line outside. there is a snack of some sort each week (this week was porridge)

epilepsy clinic

town

Many people seem to enjoy going to town. As most of you know, I’m not a shopper. And while getting out of nkhoma from time to time is a great thing going to Lilongwe is not my idea of getting out. As Lilongwe (aka town) is where you have to go to get things done and I try to go as infrequently as possible, whenever I do go I usually have quite a list of things that it would be good to do while there. And you get other people’s errands when you are going in as well as your own. Our list looked like this—

Vet (some chickens were dying of new castle disease so we needed the vaccine)
Bank (need money)
Post office (posting letters)
Immigration (I’m going to be legal—if they will give me my stamp)
Grocery (food is a necessity)
Pharmacy (decongestant so I can breathe at night)
Shoes (rhona needs shoes to wear to work)
Market (fresh veggies!)
Lunch (keep us going)
Internet (faster than nkhoma—not hard to do)
Clinic (reason we get to take a car to town)
Ice cream (treat when in town)

Rhona did her rounds and then we got to leave…it was about 1030 and the clinic starts at 1…so roughly 1.5 hours to run around in town. First things first when we went to get the car we tried to take the wrong one (no worries—it didn’t work as the keys would fit the locks). Got the right one and headed in. at the vet (where we’d never been) we went in to ask for the vaccine or medicine or whatever and he asked are they local or exotic chickens…we had no idea and while trying to find out (from the owners who were in South Africa) he decided to give us the one that would work on either (why not just give us that anyway?!). do you have a way to refrigerate it? no we’re in a car. are you headed straight back? No this is our first stop. Can you make it your last stop? Only if you’ll stay open until 6 (they close around 4). Nope. So he bagged it in ice and away we went…rush to immigration—I’d gotten my letter saying that I could get the 6 month temporary residence stamp…now I’m legal through the beginning of next year! Then to the bank to get money and change money, post letters across the street. Grocery shopping for others as we’d decided to leave town for a week we didn’t need anything. Then lunch and to the clinic where rhona saw 25 patients and I gave out as many drugs as I could that she prescribed (we ran short of one and had to tell them to go to the hospitals to get the rest)…ice cream and then home again—leaving some more on our list for our next trip in to town.

sunrise from the mountain top

freezing on the top to watch the sunrise
me, chris, rhona

view from the mountain

august:
january: