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!








