Lilongwe, 29th August

'bo,

(coolest African greeting. Fact)

Hope everything is going well in England? I hear it was actually sunny the other day. Also West Ham to sign Adriano? Madness.

Anyway, back to where I left off, the train from Dar to Mbeya was fun if a little slow. It was an ancient Chinese relic where nothing seemed to work, but the Tanzanians understood exactly what was necessary and I was of course upgraded from 2nd class sleeper to 1st class a/c at no extra cost. Lovely. I am however the only person ever to get sun burnt sitting on a train due to my fondness of sitting in open doors observing the local population. It doesn't help that I was wearing a sleeveless vest style top and now have some quality tan lines. My carriage companions were very friendly Zambians and after chatting for a while, I pretty much slept from nightfall 'til midday the next day, though lariam and and trains aren't a good mix as I had numerous vivid nightmares. The best one involving me lying on a car roof while another car flipped onto me and bounced off, can anyone interpret this?

Arriving in Mbeya I quickly jumped on the first bus to the border and found myself in Malawi in no time at all and headed down the lake shore to Karonga. Malawi is absolutely stunning. It is one of the poorest 5 countries in the world, yet the people are the most friendly I have come across in Africa. This was evident from the start as my fellow passengers happily chattered away to me in English and tried to teach me Chichewa. One of them, Eric, helped me find a Hotel and then we headed out into Karonga to watch the Madrid derby and munch freshly caught and fried lake fish.

Waking up early the next day I headed further down the gigantic lake to the stunning Nakhata Bay. It is incredibly beautiful and the hostel I stayed in, Mayoka Village, was probably the most idyllic location I have ever seen. The people looking after the hostel, Matt and Clare were of course from the equally idyllic Bishopston area of Bristol and much time was spent discussing home. The first day I spent snorkeling around (a German guy gave me a snorkel for free!) chasing the colourful lake fish and generally messing about on the beach with some of the large American volunteer contingent found everywhere in Malawi. I traded all my books in (except dark star safari, which is probably more useful than my lonely planet) and kicked off a new reading marathon! The evening was spent at the hotel bar drinking Carlsberg Special Brew, which sadly isn't the same as the English version, and watching movies on one of the volunteer's black MacBook. I want one. A lot.

The next day was more pure wasting, the key components being snorkeling, drinking(though not at the same time obviously) and playing Frisbee, and the weather seemed to get even better! In the late evening after drinking too much Special Brew I fell asleep in a hammock by Lake Malawi, a fitting end to my time in Nakhata Bay.

I felt very relaxed ahead of the supposed 3/5/7 hour drive to Monkey Bay. The time difference is because no one in Malawi knows how long any journey takes. I have to go to Blantyre today and that apparently will either take 3, 4 or 5 hours. It was a horrible journey for so many reasons. It took 9 hours to get within 6 hours of Monkey Bay at which point I sacked it off and came to Lilongwe instead. Sitting in the back of truck itself was nice and sunny and the views over the lake were phenomenal, but the presence of Christian missionaries, seemingly on a rotating cycle who wouldn't leave me alone or stop telling me that all Africans are sinners and need to be saved, kind of ruined the ambiance. I would now like to apologise to the poor girl, who upon being the 6th new person that day to ask me if I had heard the word of Christ, received a response along the lines of "unless that word has four letters and is followed by off, then, no I don't think I've heard it." It was very hot and a not so small child had just thrown up some pink mush all over me (I mean all over), but that doesn't excuse my flippantry. I think the kid was scared I was going to give him a beating when I dragged him off the bus, but he seemed to enjoy the full blown water fight I initiated in order to get him and me clean. He has however ruined my favourite new T-shirt, which has "white boy" in Swahili emblazoned across it.

Arriving in Lilongwe after dark I checked into a nice backpackers in the suburbs and hit the bar. This morning I had a bit of an explore, checked out the large market, ate a locust, and established that my snapped in half Visa card did work twice but then half of it got swallowed and I had to cancel it. I blame the banks for only letting you get out $40 worth of Kwacha at a time.

It is nice being back in the city, but I think I'm going to head to Mozambique tomorrow as I have a brutal schedule to keep to in order to meet Nick and Jordi in Durban a week tomorrow! The highlight of Mozambique for me should be Base Backpacker's Maputo as hopefully our notorious gap year antics at Base Auckland will have travelled the continents leading to a massive security clampdown around all walls and computer parts not bolted to the floor.

LOL

Jx