Zomba and Lwande National Park

After the hike and a few days back in Blantyre, Les’s eyebrow, well on its way to recovery, no longer required band-aid protection and her doubts about wanting to continue north had subsided... despite her dad’s offer to airlift her home. We liberally thanked our hosts for everything they had done (the beds they had provided, the food they had shared, the hiking gear they had lent) and headed back out with our full backpack loads for the first time in 9 days (that’s a long time in travel terms!)

We arrived in Zomba and traipsed into a small shabby hotel near the bus stop. It was run-down but would do for a night. The ring-shaped inn enclosed a courtyard and centred in this courtyard was a small brick building – a bar, already bustling with party-cheer. Drunken locals pushily tried to engage us in slurred, heavily accented Afrenglish before we had even booked into a room. A guy stumbled towards me and asked me to buy him a beer. I joked with him, saying that he should buy ME a beer, but when he persisted, I informed him that it was racist to ask me for something just because of my skin tone. Through the drunken haze he managed to see my point and soon left me alone.

As we filled out the paperwork for two rooms, Les asked where she could find a “bathroom” (Our transpacific friends don’t like to say “toilet” – it’s just too blunt). The manager, looking a little embarrassed, responded that there was one down the road that someone could escort her to. Les, understandably perplexed, asked whether there were any on the premises and he said, “Well, yes. But you don’t want to use them! They’re not clean.” Les made the point that she may need to use a toilet again during the night, so it might be nice to have one on the premises. The manager conceded and lent Les the key to his personal toilet and promised that he would leave it with the security guard when he went home. As Les disappeared to use the manager’s private facilities, Gavin and I pushed our way through the drunken crowd and dumped our bags in the cheap and nasty rooms.

Later, after a usual local nshima and chicken dinner nearby, we returned to the hotel to find the office closed and the manager gone. Les, being a girl, needed to use the facilities for the second time in an hour (it’s these kind of necessary details that really help build a picture of the trip, don’t you think?), and asked the security guard for the key. Although he didn’t speak English, he understood enough to tell us that we were out of luck. He hadn’t been given the toilet key. I rolled my eyes and Les decided give the other toilet a shot, guessing that she had probably seen worse and would be able to deal with it. As Gavin and I started on our beers and mingled with the crowd, I got a tap on the shoulder. I turned to see Les, clutching a candle and sporting a look of utter horror: “There are no lights and literally an inch of shit and piss all over the floor in there” she groaned “and that’s just the ladies’!”

I went to investigate with her and using candlelight to guide our way (we didn’t have a working torch) we managed to find a path across the men’s bathroom floor towards the cubicles. The bathroom was like something straight out of a Saw movie. The mucky walls barely reflected the weak, flickering candlelight. And the smell was something else. We plodded carefully around the floor slime, pushing open the stalls one by one, reaching forward with the candle to illuminate each cubicle’s dingy interior. The first one lacked a seat and the rim was draped in discoloured, soggy toilet paper... NEXT! The second seemed to be the low point in the bathroom (in more ways than one). The sludge was deepest here, and darker than anywhere else. The brown and black muck was, I could only assume, raw excrement. Our hopes were not high for the final cubicle, but a brief scan revealed it to be ok! Les stepped past the threshold to take care of business and I waited in the dark, guarding the unlockable door. Five seconds or so passed but I couldn’t hear the characteristic sound of a full-bladdered woman relieving herself. “Les? Are you ok?” I prompted. A sharp-edged geometric wedge of flickering light changed shape as it expanded across the floor and over my shoes as the door swung open. Les’s face, lit from underneath, hovered in the doorway, glaring. “I’m wearing flip-flops” she said icily, “and I’ve just stepped in someone’s shit.”

She went a little nuts after that, demanding that the security guard call the owner “or else...” When she didn’t get the response she wanted she, much to the surprise of the guard and the many intrigued onlookers, kicked a door and stormed out of the hotel into the street. I ran out after her, but she had already disappeared into the darkness of the electricity-deprived town. Gavin and I, knowing that this wasn’t going to work, immediately set out to find somewhere else to stay. I booked Les and myself into a hotel around the corner, and within the hour, she had showered a hot shower, peed in a clean toilet, apologised for overreacting (although I actually thought the reaction was appropriate) and all was forgotten.

...

For the first time in a long time, I feel I can skip something. This overly detailed blog is only that way because Africa is, to me, extremely interesting and I can’t bear to miss anything worth saying. Hence the ridiculous number of words! The Zomba Plateau was nice, but not particularly special. It was foresty and lakey, and there was lots of yummy fruit for sale, but “nice” and “good” don’t make for interesting blogging, so I think I’ll leave it at that...

Lwande national park was next, and although it was a real effort getting there without our own transport, we managed it in the end, thanks to the energy provided by local deep-fried Obama Rolls (Named so because they “give you strength.” They REALLY like Obama here. See below for a pic of Les eating one!) We arrived well after dark, and once we had signed in with the extremely friendly manager, some lackeys emerged from the darkness to help us to carry our things to the camping area. We each got our own helper and marched in kerosene-lantern-lit twos through the pitch dark towards the campground. My new best friend stayed affectionately close as we walked and talked. Les’s partner, after shaking her hand, didn’t let go, and held it all the way to the camping area! This behaviour seems creepy in hindsight, especially given the fact that we were in the middle of the forest, but at the time it didn’t seem like it warranted more than haha!-they-have-a-weird-culture amusement. I guess we were so used to our celebrity status at this point that this kind of immediate and intense affection seemed warranted. We WERE special, so why wouldn’t we be treated as such?

Once the tents were set up, Gavin and I finished off the evening by watching the horror movie Saw4 at a table in absolute darkness in the forest. We went to bed straight afterwards but I don’t think I fell asleep for at least another two hours. The toilet encounter of the night before had made the film’s gruesome scenes all too authentic for my liking. If Les wasn’t there I’m not sure I would have slept at all.

There were many safaris and other activities available at the camp, but we really wanted to see some hippos up close and learn some more about the strange creatures. A brief car trip through the savannah took us to the water’s edge. We boarded a fibreglass banana-boat with our guide and paddled off through the reeds and purple and white flowering lilies. Our guide’s knowledge was clearly comprehensive and he regaled us with plentiful hippo-trivia. I now know that the collective noun for hippos is a ‘raft’*, that they actually do everything in the water (sleep, reproduce, give birth) except graze (they venture out onto the banks to graze at dusk and into the evening), and their resurfacing to breathe once every 2-5 minutes is automatic (they do it in their sleep!). We soon found a whole RAFT (I like this collective noun better) of them, surfacing and diving. It seemed, to the untrained eye, that it was just a pair, but the trained eye among us said that it was probably more like six or ten – it’s just that they take turns coming up to breathe. We paddled around the raft, being careful not to get too close - hippos are notorious for needing plenty of personal space, and getting cranky when it’s invaded. We moved to another favourite hippo hangout, and found some just lazing on the surface. Four in a row rested their heads on each other, revealing my favourite collective noun’s logical basis. We silently watched them from a safe distance and they each kept a barely-interested eye on us in return.

They took turns yawning, and I kept my camera’s lens out, ready to snap that winning shot when several yawned at once. I wanted to get a photo like the one of three yawning simultaneously on the cover of our “Southern Africa” lonely planet – anything less would be a failure. But I never did get a photo of more than one of them yawning at once, and I later discovered something that made me feel better about it: the lonely planet picture is a fake! It’s three photos of the same hippo Photoshopped together to look like three different hippos next to each other! The cover below shows two of them (the third hippo is on the continuation of the photo on the back cover), but it’s hard to see what I mean from such a small picture. It is actually a very convincing Photoshop job, but once I had my suspicions, the evidence piled up. I just can’t believe that Lonely Planet would do that! Imagine all those poor amateur photographers who’ve seen that photo, discouraged that they will never EVER take a photo that meets its (counterfeit) lofty standards! It’s a fake everybody! Spread the word! Don’t be disheartened, fellow amateur photographers! Your photo of that one hippo yawning is still good... as long as you only compare it to photos taken by photographers with morals!

The next day we left for Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city.

*EDIT: I was looking on Wikipedia, and just found out that the collective noun for hippos is actually a ‘bloat’, not a ‘raft’! He lied!

And the blogging resumes...

OK. I've been busy, ok?

But guess what? I'm back, and about to start posting with the same frequency and vigour as ever.

Stay tuned!

Over and Trout,
Liam

Climbing Mt Mulange

As the other two gathered four days of hiking provisions, I got lost trying to find the forestry office. We had read in the book that it was the place to find guides and porters but as I searched, (and tried to formulate a good joke to relay to Gavin and Les about not being able to see the forestry office for the trees – as usual my priority-compass wasn’t quite pointing north) I was harassed by local guys offering their mountain-related services. I did a lot of fending off but one particularly persuasive chap caught my attention long enough to convince me that it would be better to just hire him on the spot rather than having to wait for an hour at the forestry office while our officially assigned guide gathered his trek supplies. I had heard the same thing from a reliable source so, after some consideration, I accepted his proposition. We agreed that since he was going to be both a porter and a guide, it was only logical that he should get more than a normal guide (porters get US$10/day and guides get $15, so we agreed on $17) and promised that if we were happy with the hike, we would top it up to $20. He never received his $3/day tip. It transpired that the man was not only NOT a qualified guide but a bread thief and a bit of a prick to boot. AND, as we would find out, he knew nothing about the mountain. We were paying him more than a guide just to port! I really should have just done it the slow way and hired someone trustworthy at the elusive forestry office.

As I finalised the details of the hike with our new “guide” (whose name I’m not upset to have forgotten), Les and Gavin returned from the market with two massive bags of food. As they approached, he shot them a concerned glance and turned to me, asking without a question mark, “You will buy me a backpack.” I briefly wondered why he didn’t have his own, but didn’t ask. Instead, I just rejected his suggestion. He didn’t seem surprised, and chose to haul his fifteen kilos up the mountain in a huge carry-bag on his shoulder/head instead. As part of the deal, Les, Gavin and I carried all our own stuff in our backpacks along with some of the food that wouldn’t fit in his carry-bag. The “guide”, Gavin and I ended up carrying about 15kg each and it only seemed appropriate that Les should carry a bit less (not only because of her name! If her name was Mawr I think we would have allowed her a lighter load anyway.)

Over the next two days we climbed almost 2400 vertical metres across exceedingly varied terrain: dry scrub, charred pine plantation, open plains, rainforest (well, wet forest anyway) and finally, steep, steep rock. The view was dazzling as we scaled one after another previously distant, monumental peak, working our way gradually upwards. That said, climbing the mountain was a lot like normal walking except, as you might expect, with an element of verticality so to minimise predictably tedious, badly-written Tolkienesque landscape descriptions I’ve decided to rely on photos rather than words. Here goes:

That brings us to about 1:30pm on the second day, as we reached the hut that precedes the summit. Thomas had told of an amazing experience he had camping on the top – rather than in the hut – and promised an incredible sunrise and Gavin had carried his tent all the way up so we could repeat the experience. He wasn’t going to let the effort go to waste so although five and a half hours of uphill hiking had already taken its toll on our legs, we were determined. Three hours of leg work was all that stood in our way. Our “guide” advised heavily against it, saying that it would be too cold (temperatures regularly dropped below freezing on the top) but we, like rebellious teenagers determined not to listen to anything he said, insisted. He eventually, grudgingly, agreed to walk us half way up before turning back for the hut but made it clear that we would have to guide ourselves the rest of the way (implying that we needed him! Pah!)

The final ascent revealed an even more astounding variety of surroundings: we scrambled energetically up steep, sheer rock slopes, using the abundant white fungus that coated them for grip; we ducked through dense, sheltered Enid Blyton- or Beatrix Potter-designed hidden forests (my childhood imagination came forth to force me, against my mature, manly will, to see goblins and pixies bustling about amongst the gnarled tree roots and lush, damp moss); and we needed to remove our backpacks to squeeze through cracks and caves in the huge rock faces that composed the mountain’s capital. The path was clear enough at first but as the light faded it became more difficult to make out the cairns (small piles of rocks) and red paint blotches used to identify the trail. We only lost our way once, but it took so long for us to realise it that, in the end, an hour and a half was added to the ascent. We only neared the top as darkness fell.

Thomas’s promised camping spot was apparently very near the summit and, he promised, blindingly obvious but we hadn’t seen a patch of grass larger than a square metre for over an hour and even those paltry portions were entirely waterlogged. It didn’t look good, but as I worried to myself about what we were going to do if the improbable clearing never appeared, it did. The glade of perfectly tent shaped, soft, dry lawn, protected from the elements by huge boulders on three sides was, as promised, not 100 metres from the peak! The fading light and gaps in the lowering fog allowed us a few glimpses of the metal summit designator up ahead, but we decided to call it a day. In the morning we would climax and I could get all the dawn photos I desired*. Using the day’s concluding light, we set up the tent in its too-good-to-be-true position. Clouds thickened and lowered, whipping around the huge rock cave, disregarding our temporary home and spiralling off into twilight.

I was awoken by my cold, soggy feet five minutes before my 5:30am alarm. I had somehow slept soundly despite the presumably negative temperatures, sharing body heat with Les under Thomas’s thick, rucksack-filling sleeping bag. I blinked myself into the new day and bashed my iPod to end the pumping Psy-trance melody emanating from its earphones. It was strangely bright for pre-dawn, so I gingerly opened the tent zip to investigate. The expansive, striking watercolour landscape of the evening before was no longer. Instead, all I saw was blank canvas. Aside from the dark rocky ground immediately outside the tent, everything was pure, blinding grey-white. And wet. I groaned at the realisation that I wasn’t going to get the dawn photos I wanted and rolled over, back to sleep.

When I woke again it was 7am and the other two were already up. We sat and waited for the immense cloud to clear, huddled in our sleeping bags and playing Yahtzee to pass the time. Two hours passed before we decided the cloud wasn’t going anywhere. If we were going to make it to the top, we would just have to bite the bullet and get wet. Gavin and I opted to go raincoatless for some reason and although the rain didn’t seem too heavy at first, that changed when we rounded the corner of our protective cave and entered the fray. The driving rain felt like shards of ice against our instantaneously numb skin. The endless breakneck mist whipped by, drenching me to the bone and nearly knocking me off my feet. After only about 100m of progress, I screamed to the others, over the sound of loudly whistling rocks, to join me. We convened behind a large protective-looking boulder and unanimously decided that we weren’t going to make it to the top. Rather than conquering it, the mountain had conquered us. Before we returned to the tent to discuss a plan of action, I tentatively removed my camera from its plastic zip-lock bag and snapped the below, classic photo of defeat.

Back in the tent we decided to pass some more time playing Yahtzee, in the hope that the weather might improve. But it remained miserable outside and we only got colder. The bitter wind from around the corner still rattled in our bones and our bodies refused to warm. It was a surreal experience: playing Yahtzee in a freezing tent, wrapped in all the dry clothes we could find, shuffling away from the growing pool of water in one corner and ignoring our bodies’ empty stomachs and signs of approaching hypothermia. By the end of the third game we decided that the weather wasn’t going to improve and the lack of food (we had expected to be back at the shelter for breakfast!) drove us to departure. Despite the Yahtzee, it wasn’t a game anymore: we felt in real danger. So we packed up the tent, and set off down the mountain.

The descent was exhausting and tedious, but we ensured it was as meticulous as it needed to be, constantly reminding each other to take it slowly and carefully but without stopping. Our clothes were drenched to the last fibre and icy streams ran down both my legs straight into my already sloppy shoes. Constant shivers made coordination even more difficult and icy fingers prevented reliable grip. Les sucked on her digits to ward off the numbness. Shoes could barely cling to the tractionless mountain. Every surface had changed considerably from the night before and the plentiful, previously grippy, white rock-moss now acted as detergent on a deadly slip-and-slide. If we lost our foothold, there was a good chance we wouldn’t find it again and, in many cases, that meant hurtling straight off a cliff edge. Les had the least appropriate footwear (she insisted on wearing stilettos. Women, huh?), so I tied my camera bag strap to her rucksack and, on particularly precarious sections, used it to take some of the weight off.

Finally, after five and a half hours of meticulous descent, we made it out of the miasmic mountain mantle and back to the hut, stumbling on faltering jelly legs. The vivid images of peanut butter and jam sandwiches were all that kept me going. Well, that and pride: we didn’t want our guide to know he was right when he had said that we shouldn’t camp on the top. We put on our bravest faces for a casual “hi” to our guide as we staggered past him and into the hut, straight for the food bag. But where a full loaf once lay, only a few slices remained. Our guide denied any knowledge at first, but then admitted to taking “two or three pieces” (actually three quarters of a loaf). We grudgingly ate what was left and resolved not to give him the promised tip. That night, after a terrible, ashy dinner cooked on a fire that wouldn’t vent through the chimney (and kept extinguishing itself because we didn’t want to open the windows to the freezing elements), we went to bed, sweat-sticky, freezing, coughing from smoke inhalation and covered in soot, but mercifully dry.

The comparatively gentle descent the next day was still tricky on our marginally fresher legs. Straight-forward walking, and even small step-downs proved enormously challenging, but we were distracted from the leg-pain, however, by a debate over what to pay our guide. It culminated in the decision that Les would (keenly) take the lead role: she wanted to be the one to lecture the guide about why he didn’t deserve a tip (and it was a perfect opportunity to bring up her favourite topic: How Capitalism Works And Why You Suck At It.) Gav and I, uncomfortable about the situation, were more than happy to take a backseat. As we approached the forestry office, our guide stated that it was time for payment and Les prepped herself for an argument. She handed him the originally agreed amount (we couldn’t really go back on that) and started her pre-prepared rant but the “guide” just laughed. He knew he had been paid more than he deserved, and didn’t expect the tip anyway. We found out later that he wasn’t even a qualified porter, let alone guide, which explains a lot.

We quickly forget about the “guide” situation and hitchhiked out of Mulange on our last legs, happy knowing that we had somewhere to stay in Blantyre to recover before moving on.

* Then, after finishing up in the tent, we could walk up to the mountain peak! Har, Har, Har.

Blantyre

Blantyre was a shock at first. The tall buildings and relatively rubbish-free, painted streets were so unfamiliar after what seemed like an eternity since our last city. In actuality it had only been a little over two weeks since Harare, but the car accident had somehow slowed the week surrounding it to months.

We searched for food, but to our dismay a nearby budget supermarket proved that Malawi wasn’t going to be cheap. For example, one litre of non-fancy ice cream cost AU$17 and beans, our usual cheap fall-back option clocked in at AU$3 a can! Les, anxious about all the high numbers, immediately abandoned her plan to pretend the US$ was the same as the AU$ for the sake of straightforward divisibility and conservative spending. After ten minutes of gawking and laughing at the crazy-expensiveness, we left the store in a daze and wandered off to find an alternative. We stumbled into a restaurant and sat down feeling deflated. We must have looked it too because the manager came over to ask if we were ok. We spilled everything, starting with our surprise at the cost of supermarket food and working backwards to the car accident. The woman, Taz, was stunned and so filled with pity at our (unintentional) sob story that she offered us a spare room at her place. We were aghast! Why would she do that for some strangers in her restaurant? I’ll tell you why: she was Zimbabwean! Ha! The awesome Zimbabwean strikes again. Our new friend gave us directions on how to get to her house and called her flatmates to let them know that we would be arriving shortly.

We only learned as we were driving into Blantyre that the presidential election was coming. You wouldn’t think that this would be a problem, but Malawi is a very new democratic nation, and this would be only the country’s third such election! Unrest was predicted. Adults and kids alike walked the streets holding political banners and sporting colourful t-shirts with candidates’ faces screen printed on the front. We were mistaken for election observers on several occasions, and I can understand why: every hotel in the city was booked out and their parking lots crammed with clearly marked UN, EU, Commonwealth and US election observer vehicles. The city was jam-packed with foreigners! Not that it mattered because we (Les especially) were still a little shaken up and just wanted to sit and do nothing for a couple of days.

So we did just that: nothing much, and only went into town when we needed food or wanted to use the internet. Along with its nice buildings and clean streets, Blantyre more than fills its beggar quota. Children would often run up to us demanding money and Les, as usual, begged back at them. It was the perfect plan and stopped them in their tracks every time. That is until it backfired. One day she was in town by herself and when a kid came up she did the usual – she begged back at him and he walked away confused. It had worked as usual and she went about her business. But when she saw the same kid again a bit later on, she made the mistake of doing it a second time. This time he was with his friends and when she put out her hand, he was ready. He slapped a shiny twenty Kwacha coin into her palm, and grinned victoriously up at her. She had never thought this far ahead and before she could think what would be the best course of action her body had already stammered the word “thanks” and was walking away. She couldn’t keep the coin so she just placed it on a railing a few steps away and quickened her pace away from the laughing kids, resolving never again to do it twice to the same person.

A few comfortable nights after we had arrived in Blantyre Les felt like she had had enough hot showers and hours sleep to move on. A hike up Mt Mulange sounded like the perfect next step. We gathered advice and cold weather camping gear from one of Taz’s flatmates, Thomas the gentle German giant, and headed out the door in the direction of Malawi’s highest mountain. We had all been craving a good hike and had heard that it was incredible (more scenic than Kiliminjaro according to one Irishman!) The timing was good, too, because it meant we would be out of the city for the election and the possible aftermath. Hopefully we wouldn’t return to find the city burning, the house ransacked and Tinks gone.

It took FOUR hitchhikes to get to Mulange town: a well-intentioned local woman gave us a lift about 5km down the road to a shopping centre; a taxi driver gave us a free ride when we said we didn’t want to pay; a white guy in a fancy 4WD took us 100m and into a golf club where we spent half an hour refusing beer offers to get back to the road before darkness; and then FINALLY we caught a ride that would actually take us all the way. As we got into the final car I wished to myself that we would sometimes just take minibuses. Sure, they stop a lot and are uncomfortable, but at least they get you where you want to go! Just as this thought passed through my head, we approached a fire at the side of the road. It was a minibus incinerating itself with vigorous intensity. The heat was incredible and, despite the 10m space and pane of glass that separated us, as we passed the flaming wreck I could feel my face cook. I retracted my previous thought: hitchhiking would do just fine.

Because we had been so desperate I had accepted the final ride without first agreeing on a price, something I would never usually do. When I had asked, the driver just said “Don’t worry! We are friends! It will be a fair price!” so we just got in. Two hours later our driver pulled into a petrol station in Mulange town and we got out. “It is time for us to discuss payment”, he smiled, “I think that 800 Kwacha each will be OK” (about AU$7.50). We knew the price for a minibus and this was far more so I calmly told him that we would be paying 250 and no more. He stood his ground, telling me to “ask anybody”... so I did. The nearby petrol station attendant backed me up, telling the man that he was asking for too much. With a great feeling of ultimate smugness, I handed over the revised total and we walked away without saying thanks. Unfortunately they had left us outside town and we had to walk another 5km to get to the nearest hotel. The unplanned warm-up for the hike to follow ended with a cold beer and soft bed.

Entering Malawi

Two epic hitchhiking days were needed to travel the paltry 100km from Caia in Mozambique to the Malawian border. At the time it seemed like a good idea to just pick the closest border crossing on the map, but we really should have checked whether the bridge across the river actually still existed. Our final Mozambican hitchhikee drove us though tiny villages swarming with children who ran out onto the road to wave to the white people (see below!). This was clearly not a usual tourist route. Our driver eventually pulled up to the riverbank amongst bushes where several suspicious looking men stood, waiting for his arrival. Without exchanging a word, he and his colleagues unloaded several large petrol barrels that had accompanied us in the back of the truck and scrubbed the tray down while Les, Gavin and I whispered about what could be going on. We assumed that it was illegal black-market petrol smuggling. Eventually the buzz of an outboard motor could be heard approaching. When it arrived the petrol barrels were loaded onto the tiny vessel and we were herded on with them. Several of the other men joined us and we cruised along, and across, the Zambezi amongst crocodile-infested sand banks. On the other side, after a group photo (love our man’s t-shirt!), we were directed towards the nearest town and left our friends to their miscellaneous illicit activity. We wandered through what could have easily been a Wild West film set, following a winding dirt road past a dilapidated railway that carved its way through an ochre ravine to the right. Eventually, after meandering through the strangely busy (considering the lack of people elsewhere) town centre, we found somewhere to stay.

We were up early the next day and headed down to the “bus stop” where we found a hoard of over twenty locals sitting and apparently just waiting for people just like us to come along. We had been warned that the “correct price” to the border was US$2.86 (no more, no less) so when our best offer was equivalent to US$17 we stood our ground. It took a bit of work, but we finally talked them into giving us a better deal: we could go “later” for just a few dollars. Les, as always communicating on our behalf in Spanortuguese, accepted.

Minutes and hours passed as we sat waiting for “later” to arrive. The lack of a definite schedule or even a hint of its eventual approach made me antsy. I distracted myself by munching on greasy deep-fried dough balls bought from roadside children who seemed to be the only productive people in the town. The men just sat and talked and, despite the hour, many drank beer. I paced the dusty roadside and we talked amongst ourselves, unable to avoid the topic on all our minds: what was going on? All the ingredients were there: there was a car and there were people. Why couldn’t we just leave? Then finally, with a burst of animation, the group sprang to life: the time had come. We were summoned to get into the tray of the ute that had been sitting there all along. The driver, a man who been there all along, and our fellow passengers, all people who had been there all along also mounted the vehicle and the engine started. We had waited for four and a half hours for apparently no reason. Most of the people who had been sitting around just dispersed as the car took off along the dirt road towards Malawi and we shook our heads, hardly able to believe the extreme inefficiency.

We ignored the many local men forcefully offering bicycle taxi rides at the border and resolved to walk, instead of ride, through no man’s land: a lesson in manners through business deprivation. The deserted border acted as a waypoint for a single derelict dirt track (see below). Out of interest, I asked the man at the desk whether many people passed through. “Oh yes!” he enthused, grinning, “We get someone every day. Just the other day we had someone come through on a motorbike!”

On the other side of no man’s land, something occurred to me: this tiny town was unlikely to have money changing facilities or an ATM so I asked the gruff but friendly border control man about it. Indeed, there was no way to change money in Marka (apparently the name of the unmarked border village) and that black market money changers were “completely illegal” in Malawi. But before we could wonder what to do next, he, with a resigned sigh, asked “how much do you need? If you wait here I will find someone who can change it for you.” He strode out the door with our Meticals and returned a few minutes later with a wad of Kwacha and, without checking our working (or our honesty), just handed over the amount that Gavin had computed on a calculator. Definitely the best border control official/illegal black market money changer I’ve ever met.

We needed a lift to Nsanje (25km away) and a man standing outside said we could go with him for 10,000 Kwacha. It took a moment for us to do the new mental currency conversion and when we worked out he was asking for AU$100 for the three of us we just laughed: he was one of THOSE, and I don’t deal with THEM. He explained to us that converting back to “your money” didn’t make sense because “You are not in America anymore – you have to think in terms of Malawi Kwacha now because you are in Malawi.” I explained to him that things cost LESS here, not more and that he was an imbecile for thinking that he could trick us with such ridiculous illogic. We turned our backs on him and wandered deeper into the village in search of another ride. At least fifty children of varying age swarmed around us, demanding “gimme pen, gimme sweet, gimme Kwacha” (usually in that order) in the most demanding way I had yet experienced. But I wasn’t in the mood. The extortionate driver had got me worked up and it was all I could do not to scream at the little brats. Les had seen it all before, however, and knew what to do.

< !!!NANNY MODE ENGAGED!!! >

She turned to the group and, clapping her hands to keep the rhythm, chanted the words “Wel-Come-To-Mah-Lah-Wee”. In less than a minute her voice could no longer be heard over the kids bellowing their new mantra back at her. Not one of them asked us to “gimme” anything after that – they had apparently only been doing it for the attention and, I’m willing to guess, didn’t even understand what they were saying. Les, the pied piper of Marka, continued to repeat the phrase at the top of her voice and led Gavin, me and an ever increasing number of deafening children through the village. Everyone who didn’t join in stopped to stare at the procession and in minutes I had forgotten I had ever been in a bad mood. Soon we found the ride we wanted for a fair price and left the village of Marka in the back of a truck, leaving a vapour-trail of chanting children behind the vehicle. I grinned to myself, happy to know that the next backpackers to cross that border would receive a greeting that they would never forget.

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