Nhkata Bay

May 3, 2011

Nhkata Bay and beyond

The blog has been silent for a while because I have been very busy with work, the arrival of my husband and another guest.  At work I am developing workshops on writing and evaluating multiple choice test questions and on a graduate seminar on qualitative research.  We have our first data from the research study and thanks to Ru Zeng who is visiting me the data has been entered into a spreadsheet. 

Easter here is a four day weekend beginning on Good Friday.  I stretched it to 5 days and went with Ru, a former student to Nhkata Bay a beautiful place on the northern end of Lake Malawi.  We took the bus from Lilongwe to Mzuzu – the coffee capital of Malawi.  My friend Heidi, an English language fellow from Blantyre, was already on the bus when we boarded in Lilongwe.  (Her day on the bus eventually stretched to 14 hours!).  Although we were told this was an express bus – it stopped a lot and the ride took 7 hours for a 4 hour trip by car.  Because of the holiday the bus was absolutely packed with people standing in the aisles and luggage and bags of produce everywhere. 

Northern Malawi is quite beautiful with highlands, hills, and many more trees than the south and central regions. Some of the trees are evergreens.  However commercial logging and clear cutting is also common.  We had pre-booked a guest house at St. John of God vocational college.   For the equivalent of $28.00 each we had a three bedroom house with kitchen, living room and cable TV with breakfast cooked to order included – quite a deal.  However after the long bus ride the amenity we were most interested in was the shower – which unlike most in Malawi had a powerful stream of water – unfortunately it was cold the first night because the geyser didn’t get heated since we flipped the wrong switch.  In the morning we paid our Mzuzu taxi driver the equivalent of $10/each to drive us to Nhkata Bay.  The ride was beautiful through rolling hills with trees and small villages – the road was full of potholes but our driver knew it well and successfully dodged the largest holes – some of which would certainly have broken an axle.  At the crest of a hill we caught a breathtaking glimpse of the impossibly blue waters of the bay.  We continued through the small town of Nhkata Bay which was full of Peace Corps volunteers on holiday.  Then we started up perhaps the worst road I have seen here – I know I would have turned my 4 wheel drive around before I got far up the road but our taxi driver soldiered on only occasionally striking bottom.  After what seemed like a long time we reached Mayoka Village on the shores of Lake Malawi.  We were then confronted with some interesting steps – lots of them down into the village perched on the hillside with magnificent views. The stairs were quite treacherous as like most stairs here they were of different heights, were very steep, and had no railings.  I was grateful it did not rain all weekend.  We were shown to a lovely 2 bedroom chalet with fabulous views of the bay.  We each had a comfortable mosquito netted bed and shared another lovely shower.  The water in the bay  was cerulean blue, warm, and full of colorful fish.  The whole place reminded me of Micronesia. Many of the fish looked similar to those I saw diving in Micronesia but this is fresh water.  Apparently all the fish in Lake Malawi come from a common ancestor but they certainly don’t look it.  The predominant colors are yellow, white, and electric blue. Because I injured my shoulder (partial rotator cuff tear) in a fall the week before I was afraid to get into the water but I finally couldn’t stand not snorkeling so I did – it was worth it and I tried very hard to paddle with one hand and two feet.  The fish were so lovely and I even saw an eel which looked quite different than the ocean eels.  I had hoped to dive in the lake but that is not to be as my shoulder is healing very slowly. 

The village, and in fact the whole area was full of young volunteers from the US, England, Germany and elsewhere.  Every night there was a big party somewhere – thank heavens the one at our place occurred the night before we arrived.  Every morning we saw hung over young folks either making their way back from the party or hanging around looking miserable.  I don’t miss those days. 

We spent our time in the bay sitting around in the sun, reading, paddling in the water, visiting with Lisa a Fulbright student who has been collecting data in the bay for several months and relaxing.  I hardly knew what to do with myself all this rest.  We ate some excellent food but we had to wait a long time for our orders.  One lunch order arrive 1 hr and 45 minutes after we placed it!  As Lisa says TIA!  This is Africa!

After our relaxing weekend it was back to the guest house in Mzuzu for Ru and I and off to the overnight bus for Heidi.  Our bus left early Tuesday morning and was overfull with people standing in the aisles beating the people in aisle seats over the head with their bags.  It seemed like a long journey but actually was shorter than the trip to Mzuzu.  I missed a day of work. But I don’t think anyone missed me. 

Wednesday night I was busy cleaning my room because Clint was coming on Thursday.  You cannot imagine how excited I was to see him.  I arrived at the airport about 5 minutes before the plane was due to land. I discovered that the only way to find out if the plane landed was to pay 100Kw to go up to the observation deck and watch it land!  No arrival and departure boards in Lilongwe airport.  I saw the plane come in, waited until the buses picked up most of the passengers to bring them to the terminal and then went downstairs and waited and waited and waited.  Finally about an hour after the plane landed a large group of South African soccer players emerged followed by a very tired and happy Clint!  He looked very good and said he slept all the way from London to Joburg.  He was a bit disoriented and kept saying how warm it was even though for us it was a very cool day.  When we got home Ru came back from an excursion to Dedza and made us all a lovely Chinese meal.  For once the power did not go out!

Since Clint’s arrival I have been busy and he has been resting.  On the 13^th we’ll go to the southern part of the Lake and to Blantyre hopefully to visit the tea plantations as well as for me to attend the graduate students’ presentations.  I have to be back later that week as I am doing a series of workshops on writing multiple choice questions.  In the meantime I am plotting a way to go to Zanzibar when I finish at KCN.  It may not work out but I sure hope it does – it’s the spice capital of Africa.

Pictures will be posted as soon as I have enough bandwidth