Where Are Ron and Ellen?
Portugal (Ron and Ellen), Southeastern Africa (Ron), 19 September 2013 - 13 January 2014
Ron and Ellen in Porto, Portugal, October 2013
Malawi, Wedding, and Cape Maclear
12 December 2013
Afton, Virginia, USADear family and friends,
After considerable pestering on my part, I have finally extracted from Ron his first report in two weeks. It may be a couple of weeks before we get another report, since he tells me he will be traveling quickly and does not plan to get a phone sim card with internet while he is in Zambia, Zimbabwe (Victoria Falls) or Botswana (if he does a safari there), and will thus have to rely on occasional wifi hotspots or internet cafes.
Here in central Virginia, we dodged two storms, one last Sunday which was predicted to bring ice and wide-spread power outages (we got a little sleet, a little ice on trees, no outages, none of the predicted accumulation), and one on Tuesday, which was supposed to bring us 3-6 inches of snow during the day and prompted the closing of all area schools (we got rain).
I had a fine Thanksgiving with family here, made especially exciting because within about 45 minutes of arriving, Derrick, our son-in-law, had shot (while sitting in the garden chairs, no less!), not one but two of the multitude of voracious deer that get in our garden despite the 7-foot high netting surrounding it. He gutted them and hung them overnight in our barn, then came back the next day and took them to a local processing plant where they were skinned, butchered, and packaged into about 65 pounds of excellent venison dinners. Between our fields, our woods, and our garden, we know those deer were well fed!
Love to all,
Ellen
Malawi, Wedding, and Cape Maclear
11 December 2013
Cape Maclear, Monkey Bay, MalawiHello, my dear,
Now sitting under a thatched roof in a beautiful and tranquil spot overlooking the beach, Lake Malawi, boats, Donwe Island and Thumbi West Island from EcoLodge in Cape Maclear, drinking tea with lemon and using my smart phone and local sim card as a hot-spot so I can read and surf on my touch pad - agh the hardships of travel. Last night I ate catfish, fried rice with egg and a wonderful tasting bowl of mixed vegetables in a sauce and this morning I had an omelet with cheese and tomatoes.
I rented a small single room with a shared bath overlooking the patio, beach and Lake for around $22 and the first person I met using his computer where I am sitting now was a scientist from Maryland who studies fish. He had also just arrived and was going to stay for a month with his wife, through Christmas and New Year's. After studying fish in Central America he came here to study fish in Lake Malawi and discovered this place. He was responsible for making Cape Maclear into a National Park and a World Heritage site to protect the fish and the forest. He has returned for a month, including Christmas and New Year's, with his wife. He says the scuba and snorkeling are wonderful. I have now learned he started this place as an NGO to provide employment and raise funds for other projects. If anyone would like to come here as a volunteer they have some rooms available for volunteers. His wife from Finland is quite an active lady, starting lots of projects here such as gardens, tree nursery, AIDs training programs, a book on AIDs for young students using animals like a cartoon book.
Contact info: Cape Maclear EcoLodge, PO Box 55, Monkey Bay, Malawi, +265 999 140 905, +265 881 092 810, heeedchembe@gmail.com www.heeedmalawi.net Perhaps a 20% discount for longer stays.
In one conversation I mentioned to his wife that they need to plant trees along the street going down the beach road connecting the parts of the villages. This led to a long discussion with their NGO manager about getting the clans (there are 32) involved, with each clan adopting 10 trees and some competition and incentives to keep the trees alive and protected from the goats who are worse than our deer.
There are many places to stay with a wide range of prices here on the NW coast of the Cape McClear National Park.
For a few years I have been proposing a theory that it is as important when you go some place as it is where you go. For example, we visited Poland in 1989 between the Roundtable Discussions and the first election when no one knew what would happen and there were almost no tourists. Another example is Vietnam in 1992 where almost every one used bicycles and the country had just opened for tourists. And in 1992 I visited also Ankor Wat in Cambodia where there were no more than 8 travelers in Siem Reap and the Cambodian workers were still cleaning the bat dung off the buildings. When I returned in 2003 It was like Disney Land and there must have been thousands of people on the main entry way to Ankor Wat. Others say I should go to Cuba before Castro dies. Or to Burma before the Military loses control. I agree and have done so. Cay Corka, Belize, in 1971 where I knew everyone on the island before I left and when I returned in the late 80s there were accommodations for over 500, probably 5000 or many more by now. Or Panajachel, Guatemala. In 1971, it was my most favorite place ever but I almost cried and did not like what it had become when I returned in 2006. Or Dali China in 1998. The latest answers people have given to my question have been to Antarctica, New Zealand and the far East coast of Russia.
So I frequently ask travelers: Where should we go now? In 2009 at an Embassy party in Tashkent Uzbekistan a woman came back immediately with an answer: Malawi. She and her husband had been there to set up a brewery and she said it was wonderful and was going to change rapidly. This is my main reason for coming to Africa for this trip. I had not counted on the safari to Selous Game Reserve being a peak experience. A place not as well visited as northern Tanzania. Judging from the few people I have talked to who went to the Arusha and Serengeti National Park area, the Selous might be a better choice to see more animals in shorter distances, cheaper, and less tourists. I may have visited the Selous at the right time. And even at the right season. As we left the rains were starting and we could not have gotten back to our camp or out in a couple of more days.
I would welcome other suggestions of where travelers should go now.
When I walked across the bridge from Tanzania and came to the lowered gate on the Malawi side, a man came out of the little guard house and shook my hand while saying, "Welcome to Malawi," and pointed to the next place I would need to go to present my passport. Believe it or not, there was no charge for a visa for Americans and many other countries (not including Chile). I have crossed a lot of borders and this experience told me I had come at the right time.
On the bus from Tanzania to Malawi I joined up with a couple, he is German and she is Chilean. They both have been working in Mozambique and were traveling on their vacation time before going back to Chile. We spent a night in Karonga at a place called Safari Annex which was facing the beach but a ways back and we took a long walk on the beach with all the kids, people washing their clothes and bikes, or just swimming. At dinner we met Peter who has been working with the Episcopal Church here for years building schools and clinics and was dropped off by the Bishop. He told that me Bishop Mark, on the other side of the lake in Northern Mozambique, is an American.
Peter suggested we stay at a friend's place called Maji Zuaa which is a bit South of Chilumba and before Chitimba which is the turn off for Livingstonia. We found it and the location was spectacular, overlooking the bay of the lake. The rooms in sort of duplexes were primitive but the common space with the spectacular view was very nice, and the food was good. When I went to bed I had planned to read for a while under my mosquito net. However when I turned the touch pad on the light immediately attracted thousands of very small insects with wings, not mosquitoes, they didn't seem to bite, but were all over my body, touch pad, sheets, etc. When I woke in the morning under the small fan on the table next to my bed where I had laid my phone after setting the alarm, I found my phone covered with a sort of white powder which I presumed was from the fan blades chopping up hundreds of the insects. Later someone told me they come from the fish in the water and fly to the light to die. The local people eat them I was told.
I met and talked with Matt, an American, for a while. He started this place as an NGO to make some money to support other projects and to provide jobs for some local young people. He is a professor at Livingstonia University and involved in some other projects also. Volunteers have come to work with him because they were impressed that he started this successful experience out of nothing and it continues to grow.
The next day we went on to Livingstonia which was a difficult trip. First a wait for a mini bus to the turn off, then a wait and negotiations for seats in a truck for the 15K drive of hairpin turns up the mountain on a very bad washed out road which took a bit more than an hour. Livingston moved his projects up here because so many people died from malaria but there was no problem up high. There is no reliable transportation up or down. The best and largest University in Malawi is in Livingstonia and I enjoyed walking through the campus and talking with some of the students. We stayed in simple rooms with shared baths in Stonehouse which had recently opened the new buildings and kitchen. It was simple but adequate. There was a museum nearby explaining the history of the area.
Coming down we discovered transport only went on Mon, Wed and Fri and we waited most of the day and finally paid someone to drive us down, about $10 each. Then caught another car to Mzuzu. Not actually hitchhiking, but close too it and having to pay.
The next morning I went to the AXA bus station to take the 7 am bus to Lilongwe and discovered all the seats had been sold. But I hung around and at the last minute got a seat. There were other places I would have liked to explore in the North but I wanted to get settled in the capital for the wedding on Sunday.
Sharon's friend, TC, grew up Malawi, and she introduced me to a lot of her family using Facebook and I was invited to attend the wedding of her brother's daughter. The problem was I could not find out where the wedding was to take place. Every time I inquired I was told someone would pick me up. The morning of the wedding I changed hotels, moving to the Crown Hotel which was much nicer than the best room in the hostel I was renting for the same price, about $33 with AC. TV, private bath and amenities. I was concerned that this move would confuse the transportation. TC's brother Grieve arranged for his friend Farshid to pick me up and when he didn't show up and it was close to the wedding time I called Grieve and asked for the address again. I figured the father of the bride had enough on his plate and all I needed was an address but he insisted on picking me up. Before Grieve arrived Farshid called but Grieve was already on his way. Farshid was also in charge of the reception and was also overwhelmed with tasks.
Grieve and Farshid were both fascinating people. Grieve was tall and slender with a strong leadership personality. Farshid was in his late 60's and had come to Malawi from Iran as a Baha'i volunteer with his wife more than 30 years ago. She was "THE" dentist for I forget how many thousands of people.
The first ceremony was at the Baha'i Center. Grieve found me a seat in the second row. There was a delay and then the wedding party started to arrive dancing down the aisle to the front, eventually followed by the bride and groom who danced their way up to the front and sat on a small couch facing the audience. There was a lot of music and reading of Baha'i laws regarding marriage including the explanation that parents of both the bride and groom had to agree to the wedding before it could take place. There was a ceremony as both sets of parents came up and signed some documents (at least this is my interpretation of what I was observing).
As a sign of the times, there were lots of people with cameras and touchpads taking pictures, so many that often I could not see what was happening unless I looked at the touchpads being held up in the air to take videos over the heads of the people with cameras in front of them. Of course I was also trying to take pictures but did not feel comfortable with pushing to the front. I wonder when personal cameras will be banned from weddings and other ceremonies and people will instead be provided a Web site where all the professional pictures will be posted. There were professional photographers at the wedding.
While more pictures were being taken after the ceremony, Grieve drove me and some others to the site of the reception, in a outdoor walled area with a tent with chairs, more chairs in the open and a food and drink area. Finally the wedding party arrived and danced slowly down the aisle to the front where there was a special decorated and covered stage for the wedding party.
There was food served and one of Grieve's wife's sisters who Farshid had introduced me to, took my hand and led me through the mob scene to get something to eat. There was chicken, small pieces of cake, rice, vegetables, and something white and the texture of thick grits which was made from corn and tasted like grits to me. This is one of the national dishes of Malawi and I have seen it other times also. Now I know what it tastes like.
TC had tried to explain the dancing to me but when it started I could not understand the announcement preceding each dance and didn't really know when or which ones I could join. During the dances the dancers are throwing paper money at the bride and groom. There are different groupings of people, perhaps family, clans, who knows what other groups, and this went on for a long time with each dance lasting for a couple of minutes.
While I had added some larger bills to a tray after one of the first dances, I had not danced to throw my small 50W bills (about a dime each), and I had come with a pack of about 50. There was a table where the people gathering up the money from all over the ground would bring it to be separated and packaged. I was standing next to this table trying to figure out how to give them my pack of new 50W bills and wanting to ask how to give a new shiny penny to the bride for good luck when Grieve arrived to take me with him for the ride back to my hotel. I was trying to explain what I wanted to do when he just grabbed my hand and took me up front and explained to the MC who I was, the MC made an announcement introducing me, the music started, and Grieve insisted I dance with him and toss my money as we danced. What could I do but do so! And then he took me up to the wedding party table and I gave his daughter the new penny for good luck. As we were leaving a Dutch woman Grieve had introduced me to earlier came up to Grieve and told him she had our complete dance on video. I would love to see that!
So my dear you now know what I have been doing. I have loved the last couple of days doing nothing but reading, writing, leisure walks, good conversations, good food, and just looking at the water, boats, birds. However, I must be moving on to Blantyre to meet TC's mother and back to Lilongwe to catch a bus to Zambia and Victoria Falls then try to plan a safari in Botswana before Christmas, and who knows where I will spend Christmas. On a train to Dar es Salaam?
Love and miss you, and am glad the sleet and snow didn't get you. I would love a bit of cold weather right now.
Ron
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Last updated: 27 December 2013
