I’m in Africa!! And safe! We boarded the plane at 9:30am on Sunday morning, and didn’t get off the plane until 3:00pm Malawian time (9:00am Monday morning at home). It was the longest plane ride EVER and we never even spent any time in the airport. We flew for 8 hours until we got to Rome to refuel, but we had to stay on the plane, and from there we flew another 6 hours into Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to catch our connecting flight which we were late for, but luckily they held it for us. We literally ran from the plane onto the one waiting for us in Ethiopia and flew another 4 hours to the capital city of Lilongwe in Malawi. From the airport it was about a 30 minute bus ride to our hotel. Everyone was exhausted! I was so happy to actually be off an airplane. But our day didn’t end there. We had an hour to load our things into our room. That was a hassle in itself because there is 18 of us, all having 2 carry-on’s and 2 huge 50lb suitcases each. We had to shove into the bus and then drag our luggage up a flight of stairs to get to our room, and the handle on my largest suitcase broke!!
After about an hour we got back on the bus (Charles is our driver, he is fantastic and so nice!), and headed into the city to the Money Exchange and the US Embassy. We started off by exchanging $100.00, and ended up getting over 17,000 Kwatcha for just that small amount. This will last us a good portion of our trip. The US Embassy was amazing. I have never had an experience quite like that before and we were even able to have a meeting with the US Ambassador Badde (I think that’s how you spell it). Apparently, no one really gets to do that, so it was a real treat, and even better because he gave us water... that we could drink! He told us all about various philanthropic projects going on in Malawi, as well as about the government there. Malawi just had one of its first peaceful and fair election process and it couldn’t be more exciting. He gave us fantastic advice and really suggested we get involved in Foreign Service or the Peace Corps. He was a real pleasure; we all wished we could have stayed because it was so beautiful and clean. Afterwards we headed to the Metro Cash & Carry to buy water to last us until we would leave for Zomba on Wednesday. Of course, we were starving! So it was dinnertime and the hotel managed a place at the end of the block called Pizzaland, and there was a Burgerland inside (Haha!). My roommate, Jess, and I ate, showered and passed out for the night.
The next morning we had to be up and on the bus by 8:30am so we could head out to Freedom Gardens. I’m not even really sure how to explain this experience. It can’t be put into words to do it any justice. The garden is managed by Mrs. Chinkhuntha, her son Daniel and his best friend Moses. This farm is entirely organic, and absolutely beautiful. It’s strange because organic materials are not widely accepted or sought after in Malawi like they are in the United States. I took a lot of notes as we were learning about permaculture so I’ll make a second post dedicated to only that.
Once we got back to the hotel we decided to head to the internet café and it only costed us 5K per minute, but the gentlemen working at the desk only charged me 100K when it should have been a lot more. Such nice people. We all split up, but Dr.Kelly, Dr. Roberts, Jess, Beth, Kelsey, Angela and I pretty much stuck together because we all wanted to check our email. The rest of the group met us at Ali Baba for dinner where we had pizza, and let me tell you, it was amazing. Afterwards we went back to the market because Jess and I were craving chocolate, and Dr. Roberts bought us all beer. One of the guys on the trip, Jeff from Radford (he has dreds, and is super cool), managed to make friends with these two local guys. I don’t remember one of their names but the other is John Banana, but we just call him Bananas. They both drank and hung out with us outside the hotel and it was a good time. We were a bit skeptical of them at first but they seem like good guys, always best to be careful though. Places around here close around 7, there isn’t much light, and it gets dark so fast! It gets a bit dangerous in the alleyways and things like that (pretty much just like it would in the states), so we’ve pretty much called it an early night so far, which is good though because Jess and I have been exhausted.
The people here are so different, as to be expected. They don’t have much, they try to sell you everything and they ask for money sometimes. All we can do is politely decline, but it’s so hard! Mostly because we all want to buy things, but there will be plenty of time in the next few weeks. But the people are so happy!
Anyway, there’s more to come. I can’t believe I’ve already had so much to talk about and we’ve only been here two days. We leave here at 8am tomorrow and have a 4 hour bus ride into Zomba where we will check into Annie’s Lodge. That’s where we’ll be staying the rest of our stay in Africa, so it’ll be nice to settle in.
That’s all for now. I miss you all!!
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