Malawi Part II

So, where were we?  On top of the mountain, that’s right. Here’s the rest of our journal:

Day #3 17/9/13 Continued

By the end of the hike we were dragging ourselves from shade patch to shade patch and rationing out our last bit of water. We stopped by a little trickle of water falling down the mountainside because it was cooler and there were lots of beautiful butterflies fluttering around it. We got out the camera and took a long break before continuing on. We were beat when we got to The Mushroom Farm and also a bit devastated that they no longer took debit because it had recently changed ownership. We had very little Kwacha left but we were so exhausted we decided to just stay there for the night and see if the campsite neighboring them took card. There were some leftover peanuts and and a chocolate bar for lunch because we didn’t want to spend money but then I worried that we should have saved them in case we had to spend all our money on accommodation and couldn’t afford to buy food the next day. I have to admit to being quite stressed out at the thought of no food!

Butterfly

 

The Dining Room

 

The crew running The Mushroom Farm are young Americans and it was surprisingly lovely to hear a good old American accent! They were so welcoming and put us up in a gorgeous banda when we could only afford a tent. After a shower and clean clothes we felt better and hiked over to to Lukwe Campsite to see if they took card. Strike two. We met an Australian guy there who had also come to this place and run out of money. Malawi is a very chill place; the owner of Lukwe had just welcomed this guy to stay on and work and pay later when his bank card arrived. So he had been up on top of the mountain for about 3 weeks. Don’t ask me how one gets a bank card sent to them in such a remote place.

Back at The Mushroom Farm we pulled out our wallet and accounted for all of our money-all 4 currencies we happened to have on us. We were on a tight budget but with a little Kwacha, our USD and some stray Euro left over from our stay in Germany we figured we had enough to pay the Mushroom Farm for two nights stay and two evening meals. We also set aside enough Kwacha to get us back to Karonga where we were told there existed an ATM. Besides that we had a tiny bit of Kwacha left.

All our monies!

 

Amazing view!

 

Looking into the valley.

 

Birds eye view…plus someone down there was playing drums in the late afternoon

That evening we had a fantastic meal of groundnut stew by candlelight on the edge of a cliff. It was made even tastier by the fact that we were starving, our chocolate bar long since disappeared from our bellies. We were surprised because dinner was served much later than we had been told it would be and we weren’t feeling the most patient.  The next day we discovered that there is an hour time difference between Tanzania and Malawi. Maybe next time we visit a foreign country we should look into the details first?

View of the lake at dusk.

 

Our awesome banda.

Anyway it was a great meal and a truly restful nights sleep (we hadn’t felt all that secure down on the beach and hadn’t slept well) followed by a restful morning and the luxury of a cup of coffee. Seriously these Mushroom Farm people were the best and willing to let us owe them and figure out how to pay them later so we could relax about money. We did end up having just enough though.

Mid morning we headed out on a hike into Livingstonia, a tiny town with some interesting missionary history. The walk was beautiful though the sun came out in full force and I burnt to a crisp. We walked around town followed by a couple of dogs from Lukwe Campsite who just sort of  adopted us as their temporary masters.  We shared some homemade ice cream at a little cafe and on the walk home we shared a plate of rice and beans with the last of our Kwacha at a place called Banana and Coffee Lovely Restaurant.  The place was charming even though it was just a tiny room with table in it. It is a restaurant set up by a single mom to try to help support her son and send him to school. The food was great and the service better!

At The Banana and Coffee

 

 

Me and Tabita, owner of Banana and Coffee.

 

Love it!

 

The Menu

Oh, to backtrack – when in Livingstonia someone told us there was a bank open only on Wednesdays which it happened to be.  We thought maybe we could change some of our USD into Kwacha to stretch our budget a little bit more. To our surprise we found the “bank” was a truck with lines of people coming up to its windows. A bank in the nearest big town (about 2 hours drive), Mzuzu, sends a truck once a week. We joined the line but they wouldn’t change our dollars.

The bank.

 

The purple tree is a Jacaranda (sp?). They are all over Iringa too. Sooo beautiful.

Back to the walk home.  Some little boys led us to a cave behind a waterfall where people used to hide from slavers which was interesting to see.  We didn’t have any Kwacha left to give so we tipped them in Tanzanian shillings—poor kids!

In the cave with our guides.

 

The waterfall.

Also, this whole walk home was in full sun so I carried a big old banana leaf over the back of my neck to try to stave off skin cancer.

That night we had a delicious pad thai; another favorite meal of ours and prepared for our hike down the mountain early the next morning.

Moonrise over the lake.

 

Day #4  18/9/13

We began our decent around 6 AM. It took us a few hours and the sun came up blazing so we were ready to jump into the lake by the time we reached its shore.  So we did. First I dumped our bags with Eric and jogged along the lake to the place we stayed the first night because I realized I had left my favorite vitenge ( Tanzanian fabric) there.  Thankfully it was still there and when I got back to Eric we took turns jumping into the lake.  After that hike water never felt so good!

Then we were off to brave the long day of buses and border back to Mbeya. We wanted an early start so we weren’t picky about the dala dala and piled into the first one that came along. Piled is literal.  Eric managed to squeeze in and find a place for his butt on a metal hump behind the drivers seat.  The director excitedly told me to get in  though I could not see even a place to get a foot in let alone my whole body.  I sort of managed to launch in on top of people and tried to position myself mostly on top of poor Eric. More people got in before they got off but eventually we did get a little more comfortable.

In Karonga a guy with a van who wanted to take us to the border took Eric to an ATM as were were completely out of money. He got out just enough Kwacha to get us to the border.  The van was comfortable but seemed to be having trouble with the police and we spent a fair amount of time at a police checkpoint. There was also some funny business with another passenger getting out of the van just before we reached checkpoints and getting a lift on a bicycle through the checkpoint and then hopping back in a little ways down the road.  Who knows.

We made it to the border town which felt very much like what I imagine the wild west was like, haha.  We bought a few red bananas which I haven’t seen in Tanzania—they were yum. There were no problems at the border, thankfully, and we headed up toward the bus station (maybe a mile on foot.) Very hot walk at noon. There were several buses leaving for Mbeya when we arrived and 4 guys converged on Eric each trying to pull him to their bus. Such intense competition! Eric didn’t take too kindly to being pushed and pulled and finally pushed all 4 guys back which I think surprised them a little.

We hopped on one of the buses and were off to Mbeya.  Nothing too exciting there but when we got off the bus we ended up having to walk another hour to get to the Forest Hill Motel but at least we weren’t lost this time!  The Forest Hill Motel turned out to be more expensive than we were expecting so we went back to Karibuni (they are quite close to each other.) We got the same room we had stayed in on the way there and the same girl in the kitchen cooked some delicious fried chicken and rice.  We rested well and hired a taxi to get us to the bus station the next morning for our 7 AM departure to Iringa.

Beautiful Lake Malawi

Day of Milk?

Maria and I were discussing this evening about how our blog posts so far have offered glimpses into certain areas of our life here, but really haven’t given much insight into our day to day at Neema. So, I thought I would do something to change this…

Last week we had a local Dairy company called Asas Dairies hold a conference in our conference center for what they called “siku ya maziwa” (day of milk). As it turned out, it was quite a good time. They were pretty generous and brought in milk for all of the employees at Neema. They even shared a giant canister of strawberry milk with our cafe staff.

Ally, one of our team leaders in the cafe. He totally downed 7 glasses of the stuff.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite so much strawberry milk at once. It just kept going and going…

Some of the guys from Asas Dairies hanging out in the cafe between their conference sessions.

It’s kind of strange to us from the States, but here you can buy milk in these little bags and that’s what the company brought to give out to each one of the employees. Seemed like an odd gift to me… but hey, it was milk day after all. Everyone seemed loved it and wasted no time tearing a corner off their bag and drinking it down.

Ahazi and Maneno (Maneno, right, is working in the screen printing department now, but I’m hoping to get him back out into the pottery soon)

Kasim and Maria. (Kasim wanted a nicely posed shot with Maria, haha)

Julius sipping away. This shot just made me laugh.

Our production manager, Mode. Also enjoying that strawberry milk. It was really good.

It felt a bit like Christmas, running around handing out gifts. Though I can’t say I have ever gifted little bags of milk before, haha. It was fun. It provided a nice opportunity to snap some shots of the workshop.

Josphat and Majorino (expert paper makers!) Josphat has been working with Neema for a really long time. He was one of the first few employees and Neema was started about 10 years ago now.

A nice shot of the main workshop. There are a few other departments like carpentry and weaving which are not shown, but this is the main area.

Kasim cranking away with his sewing machine.

Tumaini 🙂 one of the cafe staff. They are fantastic and tons of fun.

Chiku is the other leader of the cafe. She runs the register and generally keeps everyone in order 🙂 She’s great. She is also one of the best translators we have at Neema so we often go to her with questions about swahili (both spoken and sign language)

Hey look, it’s Mrs. Claus, or so you would have thought.

Petro!

Netusta

It’s such a joy to work with everyone here at Neema. I mean, I’ll be honest, it’s definitely exhausting… and there is so much yet to learn, but it’s rewarding work. We thank God daily for the opportunity to be here and work along side some pretty incredible people. It’s truly amazing to see how much people with disabilities are capable of achieving if given the opportunity.

Again, I won’t sugar-coat it, there have definitely been challenges and we could use daily prayer, but it’s pretty cool to be apart of what’s going on here. It’s also a huge honor to have been asked to act as the temporary directors of Neema for 6 months. Essentially, while Ben and Katy are back in the UK, Maria and I will continue to keep over 100 people employed, which is amazing! It’s also a bit overwhelming and the responsibility does weigh heavy on us at times. But! thankfully, the same God that put this crazy idea in our heads initially will be the God that helps us through it.

Well, thanks for reading. Check back in soon!

Eric and Maria