pandastan

I took a long trip recently, because I wanted to see the south of Malawi, which I had not yet visited. I was already in Lilongwe for business, and planning to go back up north soon. I have a site-mate who lives across the street from me in Chitimba, and we decided to have a block party to celebrate (and eat) the giant block of cheese that had been sent to her in the mail. But it turned out that half the people in Peace Corps had decided to climb Mount Mulanje during the time we had scheduled for the party, so we conferred and decided to delay the party. And I decided that I would stick around and climb the mountain. But i wasn't prepared.

I took a trip south to Thyolo (pronounced Cholo) to visit a friend of mine who is an instructer there of nursing students, then I headed back to Lilongwe to meet up with Mulanje people. In Lilongwe I decided to buy some market shoes since I had heard that it was a bad idea to try it in sandals, which was all I had. I ended up buying a pair of basketball sneakers for about 7 bucks. I got a Peace Corps volunteer who was leaving the country to give me a pair of socks. Then I went with a friend north to meet another friend, and then back south the next day. We got stuck in Lilongwe again, so we didn't get to Blantyre until the next day. Blantyre is an actual city with sidewalks and a movie theater! We resolved to see a movie after the mountain, and left the next day for Mulanje.

There were 12 of us, and two people were in charge of getting food. They got us plenty of rice, but only 6 packets of soya pieces. Soya pieces are little dried chucks of flavored tofuish soy food that come in a sealed plastic bag. I usually eat all of one bag along with some rice for a complete meal. These people purchased six (6!) packets for 12 people for a three day hike. But they did get plenty of rice. Most of us didn't realize this until it was too late, and we hadn't brought personal food. Oh well, next time, "make sure you have enough food to feed yourself, and don't rely on someone else to make that happen!"



I hired a porter. Most people didn't. I have a weak back, but more than that, I didn't want to be miserable on the mountain and also didn't have anything to prove. Also, it was only $20 for three days and climbing big mountains is not something I do regularly (have ever done before, or plan to do again any time soon if ever). So it seemed liked a reasonable investment. The porterless people soon were in severe pain and The Doom was setting in on them. My porter ended up carrying someone else's stuff in addition to my own. Mulanje is the third highest mountain in Africa at 3001 m. (I had this all converted in my head to feet once, but I don't remember the figures. I think a meter is about 3.25 feet or so). We started at 720 meters and climbed to 2200 m in about seven hours the first day, where we stopped in a cabin on the mountainside. We got off to a late start so the last hour was in the dark, clambering down across stones. I had a headlamp. Many people didn't. Miraculously, nobody was injured. Finally, just before reaching the cabin-lodge thing, we had to cross a broad stream. "Really?" I said to myself. but there was nothing for it, so across we went, ankle deep in the water, market shoes soaked. We got to the cabin and cooked the rice and soya.

Our guide wanted to leave the cabin early in the morning (around 630) so we could get to the peak before noon, and back down before the rains set in. 5 people stayed at the cabin, and seven of us continued up. My shoes and socks were still soaked, so I switched to my aforementioned sandals. "Oh well," I thought, "at least my Tevas have great tread." So I thought. But it turns out I hadn't looked at the bottom of my sandals since I bought them last May. They once had great tread, but now the traction has completely worn down below the balls of my feet to a smooth finish. This I did not realize until I was slipping profusely on the tough climb that second day and I looked at those worn down soles. "Uh-oh," I thought.

You see, nobody had told me that the peak consisted of large slabs of slippery rock with little in the way of footholds, and too steep in many many places to walk up, but requires using your hands and grasping at bare rock for dear life. I was terrified. What's more, the porter did not come along for this leg of the journey, and though I left most of my stuff in the cabin, I brought a small bag with me with a few things in it. This bag was flapping in front of me over and over, obstructing my arms and threatening to knock my balance off and throw me off the edge. But I made it. But I was less worried about getting up than I was about getting down again. And getting down proved to be even more treacherous. One member of our group almost died as she lost her footing and started running right off the edge of a cliff. I turned to the left and saw her - I was dumbstruck with horror, thinking "there she goes, she's going to die now." But the guide who took us up caught her arm as she was running past and steadied her and nobody died or even got hurt. It started sprinkling a little rain on us as we came down so we had to be very careful. We went up and down 800 meters that day - it took about 7-8 hours.

We all made it down the next day. We were sore and hurting, but that was to be expected. On the way, we passed another group of Peace Corps people who were heading up. It was 10am or so, and they were resolved to go all the way to the top and back to the cabin that day. I told them not to do it and wait to start in the morning the next day, but they didn't listen to me. They ended up getting caught in serious rain and doing the last hour and a half in the dark. I was very worried about them, but they made it ok, though their experience was far more harrowing than mine. They had to come down almost all the way sitting on their butts which ruined their trousers, and one person had a sprained wrist, but I was very happy two days later in Blantyre when we met up again and I learned that nothing more serious had happened.

We caught a big buddy truck to take us from the mountain to the next stop after finishing the hike (on the way, we stopped at a beautiful waterfall and took a soothing swim.) It started raining on us and if we weren't filthy already (we were) we became so; the bottom of the trucks cargo area where we were sitting was covered with mud. But as we left, there was a full rainbow which perfectly framed the mountain (in the picture I took, note that the visible part of the mountain only goes up to about 2000 meters. You can't see the peak, called "Sapitwa" where we went). On closer examination, we saw that there was not only a full rainbow, but double full rainbows. It seemed to be a sign of some sort of blessing somehow.

Back to Blantyre. We visited the Carlsberg brewery and they gave us free beer afterwards. From there we journeyed to the movie theater and saw "Sherlock Holmes." It was a great treat to see a movie in a theater, but I have to admit that despite my affinity for Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, I found the movie to be basically lame. Why does every character in every adventure movie have to have amazing ninja fighting skills nowadays? My vision of Sherlock Holmes would have had him and Watson using clever mental deductions far more and acrobatic fighting skills far less than they did. Or remember the old Indiana Jones films? He would get into some really ugly low-skill level fist fights and was good with a whip but that was it. Anyway, it was still fun.

So: I traveled with some more people to visit another Peace Corps site in Chiradzulu, then floated up to Zomba, Malawi's former capital the next day. We ended up staying there for a few days where we ate a lot of great food, saw a baby monkey at a gas station and hiked up to a place called the "Zomba Plateau" where the most lavish hotel has been built at the top. It's called Ku Chawe, which means "at heaven" or something like that in Chichewa. Only if beers are triple the regular price in heaven. But they have a giant chess set there.

Finally, it was time to return to Lilongwe, and then back to Chitimba. But we still had a party to host in Chitimba. It was great fun; 10 people came, and we prepared a song on guitar and ukelele for it. In "How I Met your Mother," they have a Thnaksgiving where a certain character gets slapped called "Slapsgiving." We decided someone would get slapped for the party and then we would play the song they sing after the slapping in How I Met Your Mother called "You Just Got Slapped." I wanted to have a debate contest where the winner would slap the loser, but the crowd wasn't feeling it, so we just slapped a party-goer who seemed like the most slappable person and then played the song.

All in all, I had a great time. Again, I find myself writing about traveling and parties rather than my Peace Corps work, because it's really much more interesting. But my projects are coming along. On Monday, I'll be traveling to Mzuzu to pick up the wiring implements for the Youth Center-Library I'm getting hooked up with electricity, and the guardian chelter project is still in the works. I traveled to Muhuju on Tuesday because I was told one of the Chinese engineers working there would provided me with plans for the guardian shelter they already have there. When I got there, he refused to help me, saying he was "too Busy." I traveled to Rumphi with my free ride (tagging along with the ambulance driver) hoping to come back to Muhuju at 3pm when the engineer would be "less busy." But we were stranded in Rumphi due to lack of fuel. For some strange reason, the Ambulances could only be provided fuel obtained from a certain place in Mzuzu instead of just filling up at the filling station in Rumphi. It only takes about 1 1/2 hours to get to Mzuzu from Rumphi, but we ended up waiting over eight hours until we were ready to leave at 6pm. I spent 8am-8pm that day traveling and languishing in Rumphi and for absolutely nothing. But this is the way things work.

That's it for now! Wish me luck on this guardian shelter thing. I feel like I will need it.

Here are pictures from Mulanje, and other things referenced during recent weeks: http://picasaweb.google.com/yenwela/MulanjeAndMore#

Enough! or too much