back on the track on the horseback
on Hanna Gehling (Malawi), 19/Jan/2011 10:15, 34 days ago
After a looooong week waiting for Andrea and Clara to come back from Mozambique and realizing that I had stressed myself for nothing coming back in time because either the midwife students have arrived yet nor Nikki needed the car back until Friday. I was so happy to finally see my travel friends again.The last 3 weeks have been intense only together with them in the 4 square meters of the car so I felt quite lonely being in my empty flat in Blantyre, although it was good to see my friends again! We had a good dance night out the day I arrived! How to fit 8 people in a 3 door car is another story! Harry is the best!!!But on Friday, after a 7½ hours journey in the back of a pick up truck together with 25 other passengers, a chicken and a guinnypick, riding over the most terrible dirt track with meter deep bumps plus rain showers (I also had to ride this one and although I was in a comfi car I had really sour muscles), Andrea and Claraarrived, as red as the earth covered with dust all over, smelly, tired but happy to finally be in Blantyre. What a journey!Josefin, me and Andrea being reunioned with the jacobs star hahaAnd what a reunion! We went out for a bit dancing just to have a taste of Blantyre´s “night life” and to say good bye to our travel companion Josefin who had her last night out before she was leaving Malawi for good. Will miss her! But we had to hit the sack soon, the poor girls were just too tired..Clarissa is getting tired...On Saturday then finally we had a long lay in, oh yeah! With sour muscles and still a bit squirreled up we had an absolutely delicious king size breakfast with milk and eggs and even coco pops and NUTELLA!!!!!! Jummy!!! What a treat, they so deserved it and couldn’t believe their eyes with all the varieties and delicious things. Clara got her coffee, Andrea her Nutella, everyone was happy. In the late morning then we made our way to Zomba. We wanted to end this fantastic journey and holiday with something extra special so we decided to go horseback riding!Right on top of the Zomba plateau is a paradise-like horse staple with about 8 gorgeous fit and healthy horses and one fowl who´s owners are an about 50 year old couple from the UK living in Malawi for more than 40 years already. I think that is already so inspiring, they really are living the dream. A farm with horses in the middle of this beautiful nature. And Malawi gave its best with the sun coming up the minute we sat on top of the horses letting the fresh green glow in a golden light and allowing us to have a view down the plateau right through to Mulanje Mountain. So impressive! Thatdefinitely was a highlight for me so far, only the three of us in this amazing nature and our lovely horses. Mine was “ants-in-the-pants” Nick, a former race horse but now a bit older, still very fast but very alert to my instructions - thanks Nick it was a pleasure! Andrea sat on a relaxed andabsolutely beautiful Frisian Zara, pitch black with wavy hair and suiting Andrea really well and Clara had a naughty cold blood who thought it was a race horse too and always wanted to be in front. Brian, our guide, and his crazy horse leading the way for two hours and we just sat back, relaxed andenjoyed the silence. It was perfect! It is amazing how the plateau looks completely different now after the first two month of the rainy season. It is like the mountain has grown hair or something, meter high the grass and bushes, saturated with green over green over green, dotted by yellow, pink, purple and blue flowers and surrounded by the million songs of different birds. It is so beautiful it´s hard to describe. The earth is always dump what gives you this lovely earth and wood scent just what you need for a relaxed trip out of the city. This together with so close friends it can not getany better!Time flew of course and soon we had to say good bye to our new friends and made our way back down to Zomba to meet up with Anna, Nick, Sandy, Trish, Mike, Joel, Ash, Janet, two other American girls and a Belgian guy for some Pizza in Domino´s. They don’t have much in Zomba but they have a good Pizza! It was a big crowd of people and it was really nice to finally meet Anna again!We ended the night in a dance place called“G-String” but had to go to bed soon as we were all tired from the long day. As soon as I lay down it started raining, my god we were so lucky!Next morning it was already time for us to go back to Blantyre, it was Clara´s last day so we spend most of it on the crafts market buying to much ebony carvings and chatting with the locals.It was nice to check out how this whole business works. Basically the sellers are not the carvers of course although you see some guys carving at the side of the street but this is I think just to do the final corrections but mostly for attracting tourists to come around and buy some things. The sellers get their carvings from the villages around Blantyre, some even from places really far north. If you follow down the“Trade-Line” the real carvers only get maybe 50cent to 1€ from a carving the seller sells for 10-20€. They have to give most of the money to the guy who buys the carvings from the villages, it is not fair but still for the sellers a real good trade. So there are loads of them and all sellingthe same stuff. This is what you see a lot in Africa. A lot of people trying to sell the same things, I don’t know why they do that. Maybe it is just a problem with transport or it is the way it is, when my brother is doing this and it works I should do it too. Mmh..I had a long chat with one of the sellers about that, he said if him, his cousin, his son and his brother and maybe his brother´s brother in law, the brother in law´s cousin, his son and the cousin of his brother in law´s father is selling carvings the money still stays in the family right? So they have the benefits all together. That’s both true and complicated so I don’t know if the western world just has a problemwith keeping the family together or if we all are just to lazy to think that complicated. It was interesting anyway, I really enjoyed the conversation but maybe shouldn´t have. In the end the guy ask me if there was a possibility to get married sometime soon. Now I know about the business we couldas well just start a family, I still don´t know if that was a joke but he looked quiet serious.That evening we cooked some Nsima with fresh veggies from the market and had a look through all our pictures from the trip again. All the crazy movies, I´m telling you it´s hilarious and a gift to travel with actresses!Clarissa left us the next day after waiting 1½ hours for the bus to fill up. So sad!!!! Now Santa Clara is gone we are terribly missing one in our group! After a bit of sightseeing we invited my two neighbors over for dinner. After all it was a bank holiday in Malawi, Chilumba´s day, celebrating the first president fighting for independencein Malawi I think, so what would be better then spending the evening with some Malawians. They told us hilarious stories about Malawian Music and other anecdotes out of their experience travelling to Europe. Couldn´t believe it can sometimes be so difficult to just travel through a country only because you are from Africa. But humor always helps so we had a very nice and funny evening with Jerome and his cousin.These are now the last days with Andrea, my god I can´t imagine her leaving. What am I going to do without her?! I´m back at work and Andrea is reading her new play or she is going for little sightseeing tours with our new friend Orr from Israel who we met on the way back from Zomba. He was travelling in New Zealand and now in Africa for more than ayear already. Of course he has a lot of crazy stories! I think this could be for ever like this, but I guess I have to slowly say good bye.. :,( We will go to Lilongwe together on Friday so you´ll hear from me again after that.Have a good one everyone! Keep me posted what´s happening back home, I´m always curious!Bug hugs xxx