amayi

In Chicehwa “amyai” means mother or woman. But it means much more than this, in Malawi people rarely use first names. To attract attention they shout achimwene (brother) or achimwali (sister) for those who are equal and  bamboo (father) or amayi for those who are more senior or to be respectful. This translates in English to madam or sir and after trying for a few weeks to get our staff to call me Ruth rather than madam we compromised and call each other amayi or abambo.

 

A few of the staff have told me that I am like their mother as I provide for them, help them and take care of them. I now have a further 10 children in the form of some gap year students. I am sure that they don’t want me to be their mother, but it’s hard to not help out and make the start of their gap year easier. I ran an induction weekend last week which went very well and ended with a lovely trip to a small national park and picnic. But this being Malawi, all did not go smoothly and two students have been staying with us as there is no furniture in their accommodation and another two came for a night as one was ill.

mon feeling on tues

We have just had a bank holiday weekend so this morning is like a Monday morning. The holiday was to commemorate John Chilemwe and most people headed off to the lake for a weekend relaxing. We were based in Blantyre as I welcomed 7 new students who are starting work out here as volunteers, during their gap year. I think that they’ve got a feel for life here, after difficulties with cash, phone cards, transport and misunderstandings! Two of the students are staying with us as the accommodation at their project has no furniture.

 

Anyway my morning did not go to plan and I am struggling through some editing work, which I was hoping to finish at the end of this week, work in the evenings sounds like a good way of juggling kids and life but I am just too tired.

coffee

A note on accommodation in Zambia. In my opinion it all comes down to the coffee! If a lodge or hotel serves coffee in a lounger then it’s going to be OK. We did find 1 exception to this rule and that’s the lodge in Livingstone which is in a beautiful setting with lovely furnishings but only instant coffee. I did hear an American enquiring about filter coffee and was told that there was only instant but it was Nescafe! We have just sat on an amazing balcony at the Royal Livingstone hotel (the most expensive hotel in Livingstone) and the kids were served lovely fruit cocktails and we had instant coffee, so even if you pay $400 per night you still can’t expect filter coffee!

 

I am also becoming a bit obsessed by double beds, so far we have not had a room with a double bed which I find a bit strange.

open road

Driving in Zambia I find myself comparing it to Malawi. The roads are much more empty, there’s less traffic, no minibuses (except in Lusaka) and far less pedestrians and goats meandering across the highway. The whole country is more sparsely populated and the roads are truly empty. Generally the roads have been ok apart from the road to S Luangwa. This was terrible, part of the problem was that much of it is being rebuilt so cars were directed off onto dirt tracks alongside the road. Navigation has been straightforward, usually there’s only a couple of roads to chose from and despite the lack of signs we’ve been ok. The dearth of signs and villages means that we often had little idea of where we were until we reached our destination.

car troubles

Halfway through our road trip and we have had a few technical problems. At our first stop after leaving home we discovered that the catch which secures the boot shut was broken. We tied it together with string and then persuaded a friendly welder in Lilongwe to fix it back on. So far it’s still ok but it will need a new part eventually. The drive from Ntchisi into Zambia and onto S Luangwa took 9 hours and the last 3 were on dirt tracks. Some stretches were on road but for much of the route the road was under construction so we were directed off the road onto dirt tracks. This was made worse by heavy rains and enormous puddles. We noticed a strange noise as we turned off at the first sign for our lodge and further investigation by the mechanics at the lodge suggested that it was probably the bearings on the front right wheel. He assured us that we would be ok to drive back to Chipata, where he knew a garage we could take it to. The drive back was very slow and a bit stressful!

At Chipata the doc left me and the girls at a very odd motel and went to find the garage. All was going well when they found a 2^nd hand part, but it turned out to be too long so he removed the broken part and told us we’d be fine so long as we didn’t need 4WD! He’s hoping to have the part ready for when we come back through Chipata on our way home.

frustrated

It’s good to be home. We arrived in the rain last night, have had a power cut for much of today, have made a mistake with the accounts so our Malawi bank account is overdrawn and a cheque bounced, another chicken died (apparently we have been over feeding and allowing them too much exercise!) and I have lost the power cable for my laptop. There are more holiday blogs but we have had some technical problems with the ipads so I am having to rewrite them!

no lie ins but lions

Holidays on safari are nor for those who want to sleep. The first leg of our Zambian trip was to s Luangwa National Park. It was amazing. It’s green season (so called because the foliage makes it difficult to see the wildlife) so we weren’t expecting to see much, just looking forward to watching any wildlife that came our way. We arrived at the park after an epic 9 hour drive and decided to go for a game drive. We set off at a cracking pace because the word was that there were some lions finishing off a buffalo. We made it and watched a pride of lions lounging around after their festive meal.

 

The park is on a different scale to those in Malawi; we’d seen elephants, giraffe and zebra as well as lots of different antelope in Malawi but not all in one place and no big cats. We saw lions on a second occasion but not within photographing distance and the kids couldn’t see them. We were hoping to see leopards and our eldest will tell you that while on a grow up night drive I saw the back legs and tail of something that might have been a leopard!

 

The park is so huge the wildlife sort of spill out into the areas around it, this must make daily life for the local people quite hard elephants could wreck crops and houses. They also hate bicycles so if you meet an elephant while cycling you should always dismount.