25 April 2011
It’s coming toward the end of a seemingly endless break from school. I took some time and went up to Ruarwe in the north and visited Bonnie at Usisya for her village farewell. On the way we only almost died a couple of times so all in all it was a good trip.
We started from my house up to Nkhata Bay last Friday. From there we caught an ambulance ride for the 4+ hour dirt road down the side of a mountain. It had been raining. The road was wet, and slippery and muddy. The ambulance driver deserves some sort of medal of honor award for his driving skills because without him I don’t know. We only had to get out of the car once and we were only completely sideways twice. It was a unique ride. I had been on the road about a month ago with my visiting friends and everything was peachy. No rain equals easy ride. Rain equals don’t do that. It will be the last time I travel that way again.
However, once we arrived it was wonderful. We got to have lunch and then swimming time and then a community soccer match. It was basically the white people (azungu) verses the malawians. So we played for a while, had a half time break with some skits and dancing and then entered into the second half. The second half was infinitely longer than the first and i have a sneaking suspicion as to why. We were winning! When they finally blew the whistle the score was 2-1 azungu. On top of that I scored one of the goals! That’s right, living in Africa has made me a world class soccer player. I’m sure they had their absolute best players on the field and the goalie definitely didn’t fumble the ball when I scored.
We ended up spending the rest of the evening at a beautiful spot on the beach and next day caught the boat up to Ruarwe. Spent the afternoon up there, tried not to spent too much money and caught the boat south on Monday to Nkhata Bay. That pretty much rounded out the traveling vacation for me. I spent the rest at home getting free lunches and dinners at lodges near my house. Yea, that last sentence was real. It wasn’t a bad break but I think it’s about time to have something to do during the day, like teach little kids. So I’m back tomorrow and we have about 5-6 weeks until national exams begin and my job here is complete. Kelly will be coming back out in June and I think we’ll take some time to travel before our departure. It’s looking like July 15th-ish I should be stateside. So get yourself ready for that. Or if you have no idea who I am then be warned that these blog postings will cease in July. Thanks for reading.
Oh and as for pictures….I was real smart like and changed out my card when it filled up, right? Well, I then proceeded to take the new card and camera into town to load my pictures. Funny thing, all of the pictures that I wanted to load weren’t on the new card! Who knew? Next time, I guess.
