6.4.2009

Back home from Malawi now. Third Finnish student Anja (or Anna as we call her here, because her name means poo in Nyanja which is the most spoken tribe language in Lusaka area) from Helsinki came here two week ago and we went Malawi with her. Anna had to do research for her final project but for us it was just holiday!

We went there by bus which was meant to leave at 10 o’clock but finally it left 4 hours late, because busses here won’t leave until they are totally crowded with people and stuff. And that’s how our “lovely” bus trip to Lilongwe started. African music was playing very loud all of the way to Lilongwe and spaces were very tight so it wasn’t really possible to sleep. It took 14 hours to get there and we arrived in Lilongwe bus station at two in the morning. Once we got there we didn’t have any local money and our phones stopped working after crossing the border, but luckily one nice lady borrowed her phone and we could call the lift to student hostel where we were staying.

We stayed in Lilongwe for three nights. On Friday we went to zoo and shopping in town. Saturday morning we left for Lake Malawi. Bus trip took almost twice as long as we expected. Finally we arrived at Kande beach. It was ours paradise! The water was clear blue and place was very beautiful. We hired a pedal boat and a canoe and we went to the island to have an adventure. On Sunday we went horse riding with our new South-African friends and in the evening we got drunk with them. 

Everything comes to and end, so did our trip in Kande beach. On Tuesday afternoon we headed for MzooZooZoo, which is back packers hostel in the town Mzuzu. We stayed there night. Our new South-African friends were there too. We had a fun time and in the morning we had to go back to Lilongwe.

The student hostel where we were staying was quite different and we were staying in the same corridor with the local students. They played music starting at six a.m. in the morning and ending no earlier than at twelve.

Early in the morning on Friday we started our journey back to Lusaka. Surprisingly the bus left only 5 minutes late and we were back to Lusaka quite early in the evening. We had some problems at the border and we had to bribe the passport control officer to let us out of Malawi.

Back to reality. On Monday we started a practice in the cancer disease hospital which we write about more in our next blog.

If you want to read more about zambia, here is link to Anja's blog.

http://anjasmith.wordpress.com